What winning an International Business Award did for us

On the eve of the 2010 awards ceremony, two of 2009’s winners – Triodent and Pitango – explain what a win did for them.

In the Bay of Plenty town of Katikati, a local dentist’s invention has grown from a small kitchen table operation to a design and manufacture enterprise exporting to more than 60 countries.

Triodent keeps a fairly low profile in New Zealand but was firmly in the spotlight when it won the 2009 New Zealand International Business Award for best use of research and development.

Triodent was established by Katikati dentist and inventor Dr Simon McDonald in 2003 to sell his dentistry inventions but the company has grown quickly on the back of continual innovation.

It has about 12 products going through research and development at the moment, some of which will take Triodent into new fields of expertise.
The company’s flagship product is the revolutionary V3 Sectional Matrix System.

This piece of dental equipment creates a framework for dentists to use when moulding a filling between molar teeth. It is used by dentists worldwide and has won several awards in the United States, Triodent’s largest market.

Triodent employs about 90 people – 80 of those in Katikati where its products are designed, manufactured, packaged and marketed.

Professional relations manager Peter Watt says winning a category in last year’s international business awards helped Triodent develop valuable relations with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST).

Mr Watt says the process of entering the awards, as well as the feedback from the judges, brought a valuable outside perspective. “It was obvious we needed to improve our data management and administrative processes – a key part of feedback last year,” Mr Watt says.

The year since the awards has been one of enviable growth during tough economic times.

Despite the recession and an unfavourable exchange rate, Mr Watt says Triodent posted a succession of record sales months. Triodent’s major achievement of the past year, he says, has been the installation of a company-wide Enterprise Resource Planning system.

“We also reorganised our company structure to allow better focus on developing new products and taking those products to market. We installed a laser sintering machine, the first in the Southern Hemisphere using titanium powder. This is located in our new research and development facility, which was opened by Prime Minister John Key in November last year.”

Success offshore was even more pronounced. Triodent signed major distributor agreements in the United Kingdom, Canada, and a handful of smaller European and Asian countries. It launched a new product, the WedgeGuard, and Triodent is now working on export strategies to new markets, particularly South America, with help from NZTE.