THE INNOVATORS
WaterForce: Advancing Irrigation in New Zealand
A Waterforce engineer in the field.
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aterForce is a versatile New Zealand–based water services company that designs and delivers irrigation, water, and wastewater systems for clients including farmers, growers, and sports facilities. Today, one of WaterForce’s focuses is advancing center-pivot irrigation systems through variable-rate irrigation (VRI) and its monitoring and communication system, SCADAfarm. In this interview, WaterForce Director Paul Donaldson tells Irrigation Leader about the company’s history and current services. Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about the history of WaterForce.
38 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2021
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PHOTO COURTESY OF WATERFORCE.
Paul Donaldson: The three founders of WaterForce— Wayne Bell, Ron McFetridge, and I—worked at another New Zealand–owned company, which was actually acquired by a large overseas corporation in 2000. We didn’t enjoy that company’s corporate approach and felt that the Kiwi farmer needed a hands-on, agile company that could respond to any demand, so we set up WaterForce in October 2002. Today, we have 13 operations throughout New Zealand, with a large concentration on the South Island, and about 250 staff. Each branch is relatively autonomous and offers a complete turnkey package to service the surrounding
area, including full design, sales, engineering, and service support. Each branch has a sales-design team, a retail store, a workshop facility, and fully equipped service vehicles. The Christchurch branch, which is one of the largest, has 45–50 staff members, including engineers, service engineers, electrical engineers, technicians, design and sales staff, and administrative staff. Our clients include farmers, growers, and people in charge of sports facilities. Each area has its own culture and identity, which leads to specific demands. Central Otago, in the deep south of our South Island, has a lot of viticulture, but farmers in the area have also started doing some larger broad-acre irrigation using center-pivot systems. That same area has started to demand quite a lot of residential amenity irrigation as well because of amenity development and the construction of holiday homes in the Queenstown and Wanaka areas. WaterForce is distinctive because it can move and change direction quickly. We look for new marketplaces and grow them, even if that requires a change in training, culture, or engineering. For instance, after the large earthquakes in Christchurch in 2016, there was a lot of silt movement and damage in wells. We have been working with the local city council to do reengineering around the headworks and pumps of those wells. It’s been lucrative for our business,
