PPG appoint new NZ General Manager

PPG New Zealand’s National Sales and Business Development Manager Ernie Dumper was promoted to NZ General Manager (and more recently also made a Director) in July this year. Ernie has had a rapid rise in PPG New Zealand so Bob Nordgren from JOINERS Magazine sought to find out a little more about his background.

I gather you started out in the paint game at an early age.

Yes, I left school at sixteen and started a spray painters apprenticeship at JH Graham & Son where we used PPG product (Ameron back then) funnily enough. This company is still a customer of PPG today and here I am as GM of the company my former boss John Graham used to buy his paint from when I was an apprentice. I worked for John for some eight years ending up as shop manager before John sold the business to a large Japanese company who wanted the industrial coatings side of his business. This led to me running their spray shop. It was a pivotal time for me where I was trained as a colour matcher and dye master working in a dye house dying fabrics with industrial dyes and paints. This was my introduction to colour spectrometer software and the whole new world of colour technology. I had basically gone back to school.

The next phase was quite pivotal too I believe. In what way?

After about seven years I moved on and ran the colour laboratory for Mirotone, an Australian industrial paints company based in Auckland. Some five years into that job I went into their sales team in 2004 as a sales rep for their interior wood product’s range. This is where I really excelled and found my passion: getting out and learning about how customers ran their businesses and what made them successful in their individual ways. After originally being off the tools and out and about I could really relate to their needs as to what they wanted from their suppliers.

Ernie Dumper

From there things moved pretty quickly for you.

I made the move to PPG in 2008 to become a territory manager which in turn led to the PPG Industrial Coatings Australian National Sales Manager role in 2011 which saw me flying back and forward from Australia until 2015 when I settled back in New Zealand taking up the Business Development Manager role working mainly with PPG’s powder sales division along with the Industrial Coatings sales team throughout New Zealand. In 2017 I was also given the Industrial Coatings National Sales Manager role as well.

And now NZ General Manager. How does this work for you?

I think my success has been underwritten by being surrounded with some very very smart and intelligent people who work for this company. It really has been motivating to help steer their creativeness and ideas in our global state of the art coatings technology which makes PPG the leader and largest of all coatings manufacturers around the world. Our catch phrase is ‘run it like you own it’ and we do! The way I see myself in this role going forward is just one of a team who has come through the grades and is just as successful as every other person I work alongside. This in turn gives our customer base the best products and services available on the market, and manufactured right here in New Zealand.