A part time job that went wrong

The 75th Anniversary of machinery supplier W & R Jack also corresponds with the retirement of Robin Jack who has worked in and run the company for the last 50 years. JOINERS Magazine posed a set of questions for Robin on his career and events through that period. His response provides context for our industry today.

You have by any measure had a long and influential career but what influenced you to enter the world of woodworking machinery in the first place? Way back in 1969 I’d finished the BA half of a BA-BCA and wanted a job where I could start earning but also get some time off to attend lectures and complete my BCA. I wasn’t intending to make my career at Jacks but my father said “I’m sure we can find something for you to do” and I started what I thought would be part time work for a two year period. Somehow, that was more than 50 years ago, so basically, my career at Jacks has been a part time job that went wrong.

The 1980’s and 90’s saw the beginnings of the world we know today. What for you were the key developments that shaped the woodworking industry and your place in it? I must be getting old, because I actually think the genesis of today’s NZ joinery industry came 20 years earlier in the 1960’s as the supply of native timbers from our lowland forests neared exhaustion. When I started work in 1969, the joinery industry was mostly about windows and doors made of rimu and totara. No-one regarded radiata pine as suitable for joinery (or furniture) and with the treatment industry in its infancy, that was a fair call at the time. However, as the supply of native timbers dwindled, a substitute had to be found, heralding the arrival of aluminium joinery, which took the market by storm in the 70’s. The traditional joinery manufacturers, lots of them sizeable businesses which had survived the Great Depression of the 1930’s, got through World War Two and prospered through post war boom in state housing had no answer to this new threat and went to the wall one by one. Within a decade an industry that had seemed rock solid (every house needs windows and doors, right?) had been decimated. Looking back, there were important lessons in this which are still valid today, particularly the need to differentiate your products from those of your competitors, but that’s another story ...

Fortunately, although the decline of timber joinery was a massive setback, it coincided with other much more positive developments. It will be hard for today’s readers to imagine a world without particle board or MDF, but that was the situation when I started work at Jacks. Kitchen cupboards and furniture were all made from solid wood, mostly rimu, and floors were either heart rimu or heart matai T&G. Particle board appeared first as a flooring product, but by the early 1970’s it was also getting a toehold in the furniture industry, especially in bedroom furniture, wall units and in speaker cabinets for the booming stereophonic sound industry. Until the arrival of particle board there had been no need for edgebanders, (invented by Homag in 1962) but Jacks sold its first edgebander in 1972 and dozens more followed as MDF made its entrance in 1976. In this decade, panel-based products, including pre-finished kitchens, moved to centre stage and the need to cut large volumes of panels into accurate components also created a market for the first beam saws with control systems that today look embarrassingly crude.

The switch from timber windows and doors to panel-based cabinetry was a lifeline for the industry and within ten years or so the joinery factory was transformed. Where the key machines had been the buzzer, thicknesser, spindle moulder, morticer and tenoner, the workshop now gave pride of place to the dimension saw and the edgebander, both machines which need a lot of space. Joiners still needed to process solid wood, including lots of jamb liners and reveals for aluminium joinery, but this had to be done more efficiently and in less space. This opened a market for Weinig straightenermoulders which rapidly became standard equipment in any serious joinery shop.

The arrival of chipboard and MDF in the 70s’s was certainly a big milestone, but there was still a missing link – how to connect these panels accurately, quickly and robustly? The first step towards a solution came in the form of System 32 which has long since become the de facto world standard for frameless carcass construction. Jacks started to sell multispindle borers and dowel inserters but lengthy set up times made these unsuitable for NZ’s “jobbing” factories –which included most kitchen manufacturers. Fortunately the connection problem was soon solved by the arrival of knock down fittings, followed soon after by winged hinge plates and then, in the 1990s, by drawer runners.

In tandem with these changes came the introduction of digital technology. An early application was digital positioning of drilling heads which enabled a through feed panel borer to change panel size and drilling pattern in a couple of minutes instead of half an hour or longer. Then came a real game changer: machines which moved a drilling spindle from “point to point” above a stationary panel, drilling a hole at each location. Although much slower than a through feed multispindle borer which could process up to 25 panels per minute, there was virtually no set up time – perfect for the small runs typical in NZ joinery. These machines were the forerunners of the CNC machining centres which today sit at the heart of a modern joinery shop - but before this could happen another revolution was needed to dethrone the dimension saw.

The first generation of CNC machining centres were “cup and rail” designs using pendulum machining where the operator unloaded a finished panel and replaced it with a fresh “blank” at one end of the bed while the machine worked at the other end. This system worked well, especially with barcoded panels, but the panel “blanks” still had to be cut to size on a dimension saw or beam saw. Eliminating this step with the introduction of the nesting system from around 2000 really completed the revolution which began in the late 60’s with the introduction of particle board, and firmly enthroned the CNC Nesting Router alongside the Edgebander as king and queen of the joinery shop.

With W & R Jack Ltd here in New Zealand, a pivotal moment for you was the move into the Australian market with Advantech. What led to this decision and where did it lead to for you?

Yes, Advantech was certainly a great adventure! Up until 1996 a different company represented Homag in each of Australia’s five main states, but when they realised Jacks were achieving much better results in the much smaller NZ market, they offered us the chance to become their agent in Victoria. Victoria had a bigger population than NZ and even better, 90% of them were within an hour’s drive from Melbourne! It was an astonishing proposal and we went for it like a rat up a drain pipe, setting up Advantech in Melbourne and pulling together a

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good team with the lofty ambition of becoming a leading player in Australia. The pace of business is faster in Australia and pretty soon I had to move over there just to stay on top of things. Homag were thrilled with us and before long Advantech had expanded to Perth, and they were wanting us to take over in the other states as well. To help fund this growth they bought into Advantech which was renamed Homag Australia, and with the support of several Jacks veterans who had joined me across the ditch, (Ross Campbell, Bill Fergie, Brett Moore and Ross McCulloch among them) our Australian team got stuck into building a business that could challenge for market leadership nation-wide. It was an enormous challenge and a real grunt, but also super-exciting and highly educational. By the time I returned to NZ in 2006 after selling out to Homag, we were certainly vying for market leadership and I was extremely proud of what we had achieved. Looking back today, more than 20 years on, a good number of the team from those early days of Advantech/Homag Australia are still there under Ross Campbell’s leadership, which also gives me great satisfaction. Ross started working at Jacks way back in 1976 so he and I now go back 45 years! My years as the CEO of a company that was controlled by a German corporate was a new and valuable experience for me, but it was refreshing to return to the independence and lack of bureaucracy at Jacks, where we continue to deliver good results for Homag on this side of the Tasman.

You were always seen as an industry leader and indeed an entrepreneur. Tell us about those other ventures you undertook post 2000

I guess you are referring to XLam, which has to rank as the boldest business decision I ever took. After our Australian adventure, I was planning to retire, but the Global Financial Crisis in 2007-8 was not the right time to walk away. Instead, I threw myself back into the business and started looking for new opportunities to broaden its horizons. This led to a growing realisation that the construction industry was overdue for a radical reorganisation which I thought would hold good opportunities for the timber industry and therefore also for Jacks. I started to think about buildings in the same way we had learned to think about cabinets – i.e as a collection of components which could be produced with millimetric precision in a controlled factory environment then assembled on site in a fraction of the time required for a conventional build. Panelised timber framed elements is one pathway to this future and Jacks have already set up several automated factories with the capacity to produce many hundreds of dwelling units each year using this system. But it was Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) which really fired my imagination. I realised these huge timber panels could make a major contribution to reducing NZ’s carbon footprint by substituting plantation grown timber for steel and concrete in commercial construction, and my enthusiasm was further boosted when the Christchurch earthquakes revealed the high vulnerability of steel and concrete buildings to seismic events.

Everyone in the timber industry liked the idea of making CLT in NZ until they realised that there was no demand for an unknown product which was not covered by the Building Code, and that no architects or structural engineers knew how to design with this new material. A sensible person should have abandoned this project as “too hard” but by then I had become a passionate CLT advocate at architectural and engineering conferences and was sensing growing interest from the design community. With the support of my long-suffering wife Jenny and my architect brother Ian, we decided the only way forward was to build our own CLT plant and prove that radiata pine could make good quality CLT while also sequestering huge amounts of carbon in seismically safe structures. This was XLam, the first company to produce CLT in the southern hemisphere and the first to use plantation grown timber as feedstock. The team at Jacks were once again without me as we opened the doors of a manufacturing business which had no customers and made a product which was unknown and unproven. Looking back, it was madness, but what a ride! We built a magnificently committed team at XLam and step by step we knocked down the barriers. By 2016 XLam had completed hundreds of projects ranging from simple houses to apartment buildings, town houses, hotels, university hostels, commercial, retail and public buildings and even vertical extensions where extra storeys are added on top of an existing commercial building. A number of these projects had been completed in Australia and we had set up an Australian subsidiary to push into that market, which still had no local manufacturer.

With the viability of CLT firmly established on both sides of the Tasman and the company starting to compete for seriously large projects, it was time to pass the ownership of XLam into the hands of a business with the capital and other resources to take it forward, and Hyne, the largest privately owned sawmillers in Australia bought us out in 2016. They have since built a large manufacturing plant in Australia, and in a move which I did not foresee, closed the original XLam plant in Nelson, electing to supply the NZ market with CLT made in Australia. The last project to come out of the Nelson plant was the tallest CLT structure in NZ so far, the new Auckland City Mission building, at 9 storeys.

It was an enormous source of pride to build and lead the team that, against all odds, changed the face of commercial construction in New Zealand, and I am also proud that Jacks are currently in the final stages of commissioning a highly sophisticated CLT plant for Red Stag in Rotorua. While I wish XLam well, I am very happy that CLT will again be manufactured in New Zealand - because that was the original dream.

International trade shows such as Ligna in Germany and AWISA in Australia have been drawcards for Kiwis since the late 1980’s. What is your take on them as part of the woodworking industry?

I think the appeal of the large European machinery exhibitions will continue to decline. On one hand the prodigious costs of exhibiting have to be built in to machine prices at a time when growing inflationary pressures driven by shortages of steel and other materials are already a rising concern. And on the other, ever more of today’s technical innovations are digital in nature and easily demonstrated across the internet to a buyer on the other side of the world. On balance, I’m glad I don’t need to make a living by running international machinery exhibitions, and I’m also glad that Jacks has a demonstration centre in Auckland with plenty of space to set up most of the machines New Zealand customers might want to see demonstrated before buying. On 14 -16 September this year we will mount a special exhibition to mark our 75th Anniversary and I really look forward to that.

With the 75th year anniversary of Jacks this year in mind, looking back is there anything you would have done differently and where do you see the future of the woodworking industry heading?

Truthfully, I prefer to look forward rather than backwards. I’ve made my share of mistakes of course, but they say “He who makes no mistakes makes nothing” and I think there is a lot of truth in that. So, no major regrets. I’m pleased to be leaving Jacks in good shape, with a strong team and an experienced leadership group in whom I have full confidence. In the end, it’s pretty simple: if a company has good people, it will be a good company. As to the future of our industry, I will offer just two observations: The future is digital, and wood is the building material of the 21st Century.

And lastly, a quiet retirement?

Ha! Jacks have just sent Jenny and I into retirement with a handsome pair of e-bikes. I think it’s a polite way of saying “On yer bike” and I like that message! I have a long list of projects I’ve been putting off for years and don’t think I’ll be short of things to do any time soon. Nor is my involvement with Jacks at an end because I intend to continue as a non-executive director for the next few years at least.

High grade filtration

Klint and Lance Hunt, brothers, both experienced joiners and kitchen-makers from Hawera Kitchens recently relocated to a new factory. Renowned locally for their hardworking and reliable work ethic, they wanted the same for the new Dust Extraction! Also, having traditionally used a cyclone system, something much more efficient was required as the new factory is located close to the town-centre.

Egmont Air were commissioned to design, supply and install a new extraction system that met their hardworking expectations as well as stringent noise and clean-air discharge regulations.

The new Egmont Air system was specified with high grade filtration, automatic filter-cleaning and suction capabilities twice the industry standard. Lance and Klint both comment how amazing the performance is, “our factory is spotlessly clean, the boards come off the CNC totally clean, and our factory employees are loving it!”.

Taking responsible steps for a better environment has also paid off, the brothers comment “the system runs smoothly, quiet, dust-free and we sleep easy after a good days work!”

Egmont Air, trusted suppliers to the wood-working and manufacturing industry, offer a comprehensive design-toinstallation service of spray-booth and dust & fume extraction systems nationwide. Egmont Air’s team of CAD designers, sales technicians, project manager and installers work together to ensure customers’ expectations and outcomes are exceeded.

Contact Egmont Air by phone 0800 781 200 or sales@ egmontair.co.nz for more information.