Celebrating Kiwi Innovation

Our newsletters celebrate the ingenuity of Kiwi minds and their unwavering commitment to solving difficult problems.

Caliber engineers have the privilege of working with clients all over the New Zealand engineering industry. This puts us in a great position to connect, learn, and exchange inspiring stories. This newsletter serves as a collective platform, where we share stories from clients and other innovators around the country, and we invite you to contribute your own stories and help us build a collaborative engineering eco-system in New Zealand.

Revolutionising Pest Control

Goodnature's innovative pest traps protect our native birds and ecosystem from predators using CO2 canisters for multiple kills and sophisticated data analysis.?

NZ'S Largest Windfarm

The 60 turbines at Turitea Wind Farm produce 840GWh annually and can power 120,000 households. This is part of Mercury's project to advance the low emissions future.

Sustainable Fibre Innovation

KiwiFibre?won funding to create a harakeke (flax) composite material that could replace fibreglass and carbon fibre in industries such as boat, ski, and plane manufacturing.

Medical Waste to Fuel

UC researchers are utilizing catalytic pyrolysis to convert medical waste like face masks and PPE into diesel fuel. The process breaks down plastics and biomass at lower temperatures, boosting cost-effectiveness. Funding is being sought for this potential diesel-like fuel production, benefiting equipment difficult to electrify, such as fishing vessels.

Self-riveting Sheet Metals

Sia Nourani recently graduated with a PhD from the UC Mechanical Engineering Department. His thesis,?studied manufacturing quality parameters for clinching, a self-riveting process for sheet metals. Nourani’s work, including novel grain deformation characterization, yielded three published papers and potential for more.

160km/h on a 50cc Motorcycle?

Mechanical engineering students from UC aim to set a new land speed record in the 50APS-G class with a 50cc motorcycle. Using ProCADSystems high-quality 3D scans for computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel testing, they aim to optimize aerodynamics and reach 100mph at Lake Gairdner, Australia.

Battery Alternatives

The world currently relies on only two types of batteries, both with limited life cycles. University of Canterbury scientist Dr. Deborah Crittenden is testing a long-lasting battery eco-friendly alternative using room temperature molten salts.

Power from the Stars

OpenStar, a team of young scientists in Wellington, aims to harness fusion energy to combat climate change. Fusion, the process inside stars, involves fusing hydrogen atoms into helium, releasing pure energy. If successful, fusion could provide clean, virtually limitless power, with the fuel sourced from seawater. Though challenging, the team is working on building a fusion reactor prototype, backed by significant investment. Fusion energy promises to be safe, produce minimal waste, and could power cities using minimal fuel. OpenStar hopes to achieve plasma ignition by year-end and functional power plants by the 2030s.

Future of Work

Hosted by the Employers & Manufacturers Association: "Helping NZ businesses navigate the world of AI in all its confusion and complexity. We’ll share how your organisation can prepare, approach and engage your workforce for the future of business, powered by AI."

Welcome Craig Downey

Craig’s early career was in the packaging and plastics industry before moving into machinery design and servicing within the food industry. More recently, he has been being involved in the supply of high-end food processing and packaging machinery, including R&D of new designs, supply of bespoke equipment through to complete production line design and supply. Working with teams of engineers and designers, he’s helped introduce new technologies and equipment to the food industry, such as automated process monitoring production lines, x-ray batching solutions, and MES software supply for the meat industry.

A naturally inquisitive problem solver, Craig is looking forward to getting stuck in with our Waikato team, helping Caliber clients get their projects over the line.

027 379 5401?|??[email protected]

Working at Caliber

At Caliber, our team continues to grow - we have over 50 engineers around the country now. That's a powerful network of mechanical engineering brain power! We have lost of few too, hopefully temporarily, as our young engineers finally get to embark on their much anticipated OEs after Covid lockdowns. We're always looking for talented mechanical engineers to join our team, find out more about working with us:

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