Wellington Drive Technologies secures $1.75m grant
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wellington Drive Technologies secures $1.75million grant from Foundation for Research, Science and Technology to accelerate R&D into advanced electronic motors
AUCKLAND 15 May 2008 – Wellington Drive Technologies (‘Wellington’) (NZX: WDT), the New Zealand manufacturer of world leading energy saving electric motors, has announced a $1.75million grant from New Zealand Government funding agency, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST). The Foundation has approved the grant as part of its Technology for Business Growth (TBG) scheme, which partially funds technically challenging research and development projects, ultimately leading to innovative new products.
Wellington CEO, Ross Green, says “The FRST grant will allow us to accelerate our R&D programme into Advanced Fabrication, the disruptive technology partly responsible for the appearance of sophisticated consumer products like mobile phones in recent years.
“Wellington plans to be the first company in the world to bring this revolutionary technology to the electric motor industry, leading to physically smaller, robust, and highly efficient electronic motors which surpass anything currently available on the market.
“We expect
their availability over the next two to five years, enabling
rapid acceleration of sales as ‘majority market’
customers move to replace their ‘old’ motors across most
or all of their product range, adopting the new and improved
Wellington motors. These next generation motors will allow
Wellington to offer great prices to our customers while
achieving good margins.”
Advanced Fabrication technology moves electronics construction beyond printed circuit boards to specially designed silicon devices. It is highly attractive to manufacturers because these silicon systems deliver greater reliability, smaller product size and, most importantly, markedly improved costs due to the reduction in materials and labour.
About Wellington
Drive Technologies
Wellington designs and manufactures
unique energy saving electric motors that typically use one
third of the energy of conventional motors, and
significantly less steel and copper. The motors are used in
a range of equipment such as supermarket refrigeration
units, vending machines, ventilation systems, and filter
fans for clean rooms in semiconductor fabrication plants,
hospitals and the biotech sector.
The company employs
90 personnel in facilities in Auckland, Singapore, Italy,
the Netherlands, Turkey and the United States, and ships
products to 18 countries.
For further information about
Wellington Drive Technologies visit
http://www.wdtl.com
ENDS