Hydraulink and Metal Technologies Tauranga bucks the trend – goes from strength to strength with new ownership structure

Chris Weber started as the workshop manager at Tauranga Hydraulink and Metal Technologies 8 years ago. He worked his way up to Operations Manager and recently became an owner in the business utilising the Icehouse Owner Manager Programme to strengthen his business ownership skills. The Mount Maunganui-based business is showing few effects of the economic downturn and is outperforming other branches in the group.

With Hydraulink being the official supplier of hydraulic hoses and fittings to Emirates Team New Zealand, it’s not surprising Chris has had some intense late-night screen time.

How did you get into the business?

I’m a diesel mechanic by trade and early on in my career I focused on hydraulics. I knew about the business before I joined having worked with them on other projects. Bruce, the previous owner and current business partner, had been pushing me for quite a few years to work for him. Eventually, he talked about how the business was changing from just hose and fittings with more development being planned. It sounded exciting, so I jumped in and now we have taken the business much further. We service a whole range of different heavy industries; truck mounted hiabs, cranes, you name it, anything that has hydraulics we fix it – and we do the whole lot, including pneumatics and factory maintenance. We do hydraulic installs for new superyacht builds and repairs and maintenance on small pleasure boats.

We now have a manufacturing division and have started importing stainless steel hard chrome bar from Italy to make our own product.

How challenging was the process transitioning from an employee to an owner?

It was challenging around how our staff would take the news of the change process. Looking back, more communication would have been better. If I could do it again, I would be having a lot more open communications with the team so they completely understood what was going on rather than just me landing the news on everyone that I was buying into the business. But touchwood, everyone has come on board with the new structure and it’s going well.

For anyone moving into a similar ownership position, I would recommend having robust shareholders agreements in place, outlining where everyone’s responsibilities lie and with timelines on what will happen and when.

Where did you see the biggest gaps in your knowledge of business ownership?

The finance side of things was a big gap for me and a few people had recommended doing an MBA but writing essays and reading books is not my cup of tea. Getting into the Icehouse Owner Manager Programme and learning about margin and markup and how to structure sales correctly has been eye-opening. Now I’m feeling so much more comfortable, and I have a much clearer understanding in my mind, particularly being able to make the correlation between the top and bottom line.

What have been the biggest changes for you after being in the Owner Manager Programme?

As well as financials and effective communications, learning more about building our team culture with happy staff and how to read people was really important. Doing the team management profiling has shown me that I’m an introvert – only 3% of the world is more introverted than me! I’ve also done the profiling with my team which has been so valuable. How to set a clear vision and how to talk about the vision in an engaging way with the staff and making sure they are on the same page was another big takeaway for me. I got challenged by some others on the Programme to go on Toastmasters which I’m doing.

We were all from different stages in business and it was so good to hear all their stories and what problems they are facing and knowing that we were in a safe space to talk about issues.

It’s really helped my confidence to share my story and know that I’m on the right track.

How are you keeping your growth on track in this recent recession?

We are achieving growth based on last year’s numbers and we seem to be pushing forward and bucking the trend. Tauranga is a thriving city even when there’s a downturn because we have so much industry here but over the last 18 months we have been considering more diversification opportunities. We’ve only had one month where we have been behind budget.

I’ve just handed out two 5 year service awards so we are doing pretty well with retention and team culture is really good. Two of our contractors have been with us for almost 25 years.

Our work is varied, so people are engaged and interested and as we’ve grown we’ve added new people into the mix.

How did the Hydraulink business become involved with Emirates Team New Zealand?

Back in the 1995 challenge, one of the Hydraulink owners Lee Short was watching the sailing and saw what looked like a hydraulic hose blow in the cockpit he said “gees, we can do better than that”. So, they approached the NZ team and said we would like to do your hoses.

Hydraulink were given a trial and 25 years later, we are still supporting and supplying Hydraulink hose and fittings. In those days, hydraulics were a lot simpler, but on the new boats, the foil cants system are controlled by hydraulic rams and the cyclers are powering pumps under the deck. They're controlling the sail functions that change the shape of the sails and make the boat go faster - we are very proud to be suppliers to Emirates Team New Zealand!

Learn about the Owner Manager Programme here.