Builder of leisure and military craft is a treble award winner

By Graeme Kennedy

Friday 5th July 2002

TONY HEMBROW: Exports now earn half of turnover

Fast-growing manufacturer Rayglass Boats struck the treble at the WestpacTrust Manukau Business Excellence Awards as managing director Tony Hembrow plans to double his factory size to meet increasing export demand.

Rayglass, which builds a range of fibreglass leisure craft and rigid inflatables for industry, coastguard and the military, took out the excellence in manufacturing and export awards as well as being named Manukau's business of the year.

Mr Hembrow said his $20 million company exported 20% of its leisure boats and 85% of its inflatables, which now earned about 50% of turnover.

Rayglass will soon move into the larger premises while continuing to make hulls at its Hamilton plant and maintain its licensing agreement with Australian builder Whittley Cruisers to produce his fibreglass models in Victoria.

Mr Hembrow's entrepreneurial drive took him to Australia as a 16-year-old after working for an Auckland sail-maker - his last job, he said, in which he had a boss.

"I've always been self-employed since then," he said. "I went to Perth and started buying and dismantling old cars after I found I could get more for the bits than the car itself was worth.

"I built the business into a car-wrecking yard and sold it after a few years to buy a couple of trucks for the Perth-to-Darwin drilling-rig run - I was 20 and had three staff."

Mr Hembrow later sold another business at 26 and with his partner, Vicki, returned to Auckland to visit his family before planning to head for even greener pastures in the US.

"But I fell in love again with Auckland Harbour and built a 6.7m glass boat," he said.

"That introduced us to the Auckland boat-building scene and after it was finished several people liked the look of what we'd done and asked us to build more."

Mr Hembrow began manufacturing for the retail market in 1988 from a 110sq m factory in Manukau - "just enough to fit two boats in" - and two years later moved into a bigger building to handle demand.

"That was the start of Rayglass, when we got really serious about it but we didn't have the funds for a home and a business so we built a small flat above the factory, he said.

"That was part of the seven-day a week, 150% commitment and it was a big call, especially for Vicki.

"We made glass leisure boats from 4.7m to 7.3m and won our first boat of the show award in 1992 - we haven't stopped winning awards since then."

Business was booming for Rayglass but in 1974 a fire burned the factory down, destroying all the plant, moulds and tooling. He started again.

Mr Hembrow moved the factory to its current 2800sq m site in 1996 and with the domestic New Zealand market dwindling during the off-peak winters set a goal to export 50% of product to overcome the seasonality of the business.

He started the Protector series of rigid inflatable boats (RIBs) as a coastguard and military vessel in 1997 and sold it widely through Europe, Canada and the US as a work-boat and to the Malaysian Navy for border patrol.

Rayglass is building RIBs for the Canadian and US police and the US Border Patrol has several on trial.

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