Gareth Hodson and Satoshi Miwa – Furuno HQ
Furuno has a proud role to play.
The little-known New Zealand distributor and technology partner for global marine giant Furuno has a proud role to play in the Japan-based conglomerate’s latest record sales success.
Furuno, developer of the world’s first fish-finder back in 1948, and now one of the biggest international producers of marine navigation and communication equipment has recently recorded its largest revenue year ever of 114B Japanese Yen or $1.26 Billion NZD.
The brand’s best known in New Zealand for sitting atop the radars on most super yachts and commercial fishing vessels around NZ waters but tucked away in an industrial area of Auckland’s Northshore in the Wairau Valley is the NZ business, Electronic Navigation Ltd (ENL), parent company of WASSP and Furuno New Zealand, single-handedly responsible for opening up a lucrative new product line for the multi-national giant.
ENL majority owned by Furuno – is the brainchild behind the world leading WASSP Multibeam Sonar used extensively in the commercial fishing, surveying and defence industries as well as the lucrative international super yacht market. WASSP’s revolutionary multibeam technology makes it more accurate and 100 times faster compared to single-beam sounders with a huge focus on very user-friendly, intuitive design and user interface.
ENL Managing Director, Gareth Hodson, says the very first WASSP was sold into Saudi Arabia 20 years ago this month for mapping pipelines, and it’s the international nature of that first sale that has set the tone for WASSP’s continued, meteoric expansion. “WASSP now has established markets in nearly 40 countries with a number one market share in many of them from Asia to Europe to North America for the commercial fishing sector especially. “Furuno began its association with WASSP 10 years ago as part of a capital raise by ENL – a hugely strategic investment that secured global channels to market for our product as well as a key collaboration with the most advanced R&D in marine electronics on the planet.” A decade on and Hodson says: “We’ve only just begun. Exporting in the professional marine sector is not for the faint hearted. Having Furuno as a cornerstone investor provided the confidence needed to succeed. Ten years on from that initial Furuno investment from Japan, our Auckland based R&D capability has transformed while maintaining a Kiwi innovative mentality towards solving customer problems.”
Hodson says the future vision for the group and WASSP is centred around sustainability, from assisting with sustainable commercial fishing practices through to supporting renewable energy exploration such as sea-bed mapping for off-shore windfarms.
