JMP Engineering wins international accolades

JMP plans to open a sales and service facility in the US within the next 12 months to meet growing demand from its biggest offshore market boosted in the past three years by contracts worth more than $US20 million including large orders from Pepsico International’s giant snackfood division Frito-Lay which has annual sales of around $US13.5 billion.

General manager David Gross said the rapid US growth followed NZTE funding assistance enabling the company to attend trade fairs and establish a presence in the market.

 “JMP has designed, built and installed more than 300 handling systems with about half delivered to offshore customers and most to food manufacturers since we began exporting about 15 years ago,” Mr Gross said.

“We first went into Australia where we have an office in Melbourne and then to North and South America, Asia, Europe, Canada and the Pacific Islands.”

Global accolades

The company recently won Frito-Lay’s worldwide Capital Equipment Supplier of the year award and was named Kawasaki’s North American Integrator of the Year following a 2009 accolade from the Japanese manufacturer for new business development.

“The addition of systemised ingenuity and inventiveness is what allows JMP to bring real double –digit productivity gains to major global clients,” NZTE’s Specialised Manufacturing Sector Manager Tom Dawson said.

“JMP is more than just an enterprising Kiwi company with a can-do attitude. It has studied the production needs of multi-national food processors at the ground level, and also works hard at staying focussed and nimble.

 “Whether it was Path-to-Market in Australia or development assistance in North America, NZTE has been proud to support the Avondale engineering company making global giants like Nestle, Kraft, IFF and Frito Lay seek them out and recognise them with world-class supplier awards.”

Mr Gross said the system, based on robotics and automatic conveyors and stretch-film wrapping machines was developed around Kawasaki Robotics’ robots which palletise product and handle pallets - JMP is the Japanese company’s New Zealand distributor.

“We buy robots from Kawasaki then design and manufacture all other components including the conveyors, wrappers and ancillary equipment such as specialised grippers for a totally integrated system,” he said. 

 “And we design and build all our mechanical, electrical and programming systems then install and service the product ourselves to provide successful pallet handling integrated with tracking and robotic automation. 

“Some of our competitors buy a robot then use components supplied by other firms but the problem there is that the system is not as good as ones such as ours with components designed for  customers’ special needs.