Well-known New Zealand transport trailer manufacturer, Patchell Group, was first founded as a general engineering operation by Ian Patchell in Rotorua, in 1972.
From manufacturing bush canopies for forestry bulldozers for Gough, Gough and Hamer, Cable Price, and Komatsu in the 1980s, Patchell Group moved into log transport equipment manufacturing.
Providing low-tare high-tech trailers to forestry companies and logging truck owner-drivers become the backbone of the company’s business, which it continues to be to this day.
In 1984 the company became New Zealand’s first and only Caterpillar original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
Patchell Group has also produced light-tare skeletal container trailers since the 1990s for the road transport industry, another area that continues to grow with the burgeoning freight task.
There were more business acquisitions by Patchell Group in 2004 to strengthen the company’s design ability in manufacturing more specialist road transport equipment.
The Patchell Group acquired stainless-steel tanker-trailer manufacturer Simmons Engineering as well as Rotorua Stainless, a local manufacturer and stainless-steel parts supply business.
In 2005 the Patchell Group acquired Swinglift Marketing Ltd from the original designer of the Swinglift brand of container side loaders, as well as Swinglift International Ltd to produce side loaders for the international market.
The manufacture of the Swinglift side loaders was moved from the Auckland-based engineering company that was previously contracted to manufacture, to Patchell’s Rotorua workshops.
Since 2010, according to transport media, Patchell Group has become the number one transport trailer manufacturer in New Zealand.
Figures published by Truck & Driver magazine show that 844 trailers built by Patchell Group have been registered for the road in the last six years, more than any other local manufacturer.
Patchell Group general manager Brent Whibley also points out that this production figure does not take into account the logging truck equipment and specialist off-highway equipment, which is excluded from new vehicle registration statistics.
The company has eight manufacturing sites in Rotorua, and all are kitted out with the latest technology for manufacturing heavy transport trailers and equipment, including four robots, one being a chassis welding robot.
There are 184 staff members in the group, according to Whibley, and the 13-strong design team includes some NZCE and BE qualified mechanical engineers, and software used for trailer design includes Solidworks, Autocad, and Cosmos Works.
The majority of its equipment manufacturing is for the local New Zealand market, but Patchell Group also exports Swinglift product into Australia, the Arab Emirates, Africa — recently including some logging units to South Africa — and the United Kingdom.
Whibley says Patchell Group provides custom-built solutions to a core base of customers, and he says maintaining good client relationships is paramount to the business.
“Every customer is important to us, and we want to provide everyone with the same service level,” Whibley says.
He says that the average Patchell trailer takes up to eight weeks to build, and up to 10 weeks for some of the Swinglift products.
The company uses both internal and external certification experts to ratify its newly built trailers for commercial road transport purposes.
“Because we produce to our customer requirements, some trailers are wholly unique,” Whibley says, adding that a Patchell Group–manufactured trailer is differentiated from other brands because quality, and an expectation of being built to last, is at the core of the design and build process.
He says, “Attention to detail is essential to meeting demanding customer requirements.”
