In this episode of the Engineering Success Podcast, Melinda Sietsma sits down with Peter McKinnon, the managing director of Omnia Wheel. Peter shares his fascinating career path, from co-founding a successful construction company, Mainbrace, to his current role leading Omnia Wheel. He introduces us to the Omni Wheel, an incredible invention that combines the best parts of a fixed wheel and a swivel caster. This means it offers the directional stability of a fixed wheel but can move in any direction, just like a swivel caster—without the typical swivel offset. This innovative design opens up a world of new design possibilities for products and makes things much easier to use, giving you superior directional control and load stability. Peter explains how Omnia Wheel’s unique polymer design and manufacturing process truly set it apart from anything else out there.
Please note: this transcript has been auto-generated and may contain some errors.
You have to automate. There is no way around it.
Yeah.
And people saying to me, what about the jobs? And it’s a valid concern, but the reality for us is without automation, there are no jobs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because we just can’t compete.
Welcome to the Engineering Success Podcast. My name is Melinda Sietsma and I am the Senior Engineering Consultant. here in the team at NewyTechPeople. Today I had the pleasure of being joined by Peter McKinnon. Peter is the Managing Director of Omnia Wheel.
Thanks for joining me Peter.
That’s a pleasure Mel. Thanks for having me here. So I guess I’d like to get started by learning a little bit more about your career journey so far.
If you could share that with us. Yeah, by all means. Like I said, for me it all started in construction. So I did a building construction degree at the University of New South Wales some years back. Started off in engineering, did six months of civil engineering and then thought, that’s not quite for me. So I changed. Spent half my career in construction, still involved in construction as a shareholder.
Yeah.
But I stepped out from the board last October. So I could just focus on Omnia Wheel.
Yeah, fantastic.
I spent about nine years with a company called Girvan and then we started our own business. Greg, who’s best friend and business partner for many years, we started Mainbrace about 36 years ago. So that’s still one of my major involvements.
Yeah.
And Mainbrace is commercial construction.
Yeah, retail particularly. So it focused in retail and logistics sectors, but works for all the major retailers. Coles, Woolworths, I think we’ve done over 500 projects for Woolworths over the years. Aldi, Costco, where one or two builders in Australia do Costco’s work. So I’ve got a lot of background in that sort of thing, predominantly in design and construct, but a range of things.
It’s a pretty impressive number of projects.
Yeah, it is. It’s a great company. It’s got a good culture. It’s quite solid. It’s weathered the storms through COVID and a year of quite wet weather, that sort of thing. And really, for me, it’s been quite a, a backstop to Omnia that’s allowed us to do things we probably couldn’t have done otherwise.
Yeah.
Can you give us a little bit of your story around what inspired you to start Omnia?
Yeah, well, actually, I didn’t start it. So it goes, but has some history where when I got involved was about 2005. But before that, Graham Guile, he was the founder of the company, actually, but he worked with his father previously, Henry Guile. who worked on the wheel, then known as the Ezekiel wheel. Graham worked on the wheel with his father for some years and unfortunately Henry passed away, but Graham picked it back up and I think Graham nailed it. And so he started the business not too long before that, raised some funds and then was looking for a second round of funding and that’s where I became involved.
Yeah.
And you’ve been involved for a number of years now?
Almost 20 years.
Yeah.
So it’s been a, I would just say a love affair with a wheel for 20 years.
And guess so if we kind of move forward to the technology that you use at Omniya, can you tell us what makes the Omni wheel different to other wheels that are out there in the marketplace?
Yeah, there’s probably two, you know, how’s it different to a normal wheel and, and The other question, I guess, is how’s it different to other Omni wheels? Because there are other Omni wheels out there. Probably the best way to describe it is that it has the simplicity of a fixed wheel, but it also has the multidirectional capability of a swivel caster. So as a fixed wheel, you have a range of options of how you mount it, and also the functionality of what you can do with it, with a fixed wheel. It’s very directionally stable, doesn’t turn, but it’ll track very directly. And you can also pivot off it and do those sorts of things, which is difficult with swivel caster. But a swivel caster allows products to go in different directions. And swivel cast has been a great product. It’s been around for over a century. It’s on everything. We use it daily. But it has a swivel offset and it has a lead follow relationship. Whereas The Omni wheel has that simplicity and functionality of the fixed wheel, but has the directional, multidirectional capability of a swivel. But does it without turning or using a swivel, which also means the relationship when you apply a force to it, it moves in the direction you’ve applied that force rather than have to work around a swivel. But also in design, you don’t have to design above the wheel or big pockets to allow for the swivel swept radius of a swivel offset. It has a unique functionality from that point of view that allows you to create new products and new designs that aren’t really possible with a swivel caster. And what you’ll find with a swivel is great. It’s like allows that fluidity and that’s one of the greatest things about a swivel caster. But it’s also one of the worst things at times about it because it’s so reactive in response to an incline or a force. And it’s a bit like probably the best way to describe it is your shopping trolley with four swivel casters. If you fill it up and you’re pushing it down the aisle, you’ll turn it, but it doesn’t turn. You actually have to physically recreate the momentum in the direction you want to go. Whereas with an Omni wheel, when you turn the thing, you actually turn the wheel and it tracks in the new direction without you actually having to pull it around. And it’s why you see a lot of the time in kart design, designers will introduce two fixed wheels and that’s to give it back directional control. But in doing that, you lose direct sideways capability.
Yeah.
Whereas you don’t lose that with an omni wheel. So it’s sort of got all those benefits to it. and it opens the door for designers with innovation to do different things that you just can’t do with the swivel. So it can be an alternative for a ball transfer unit. It can be used as a multi-directional roller, conveyor roller. So it has lots of different uses in that fact. Then when it comes to direct competition from other omni wheels, There’s a number of different ways to make them. And we’ve pioneered through Graham a full polymer wheel, whereas most will use a steel roller axle. They’ll either sandwich that axle with a plastic frame or build it in aluminium or steel. It’s okay, but when you bend steel, it’s bent. And when you bend an axle, nothing rolls on it. One of the benefits of how we make them is with a pretty much like a spider’s webber monolithic frame, which includes a hub, as well as the peripheral axles around an Omni wheel. I probably haven’t explained what an Omni wheel is in that sense. So instead of the swivel, it uses rollers on the outer rim. I should have brought one along to show, but anyway, when you do that, you’ve got a supporting radial arm or spoke. to hold the ends of the two axles. And when you put the roller on, a single rim is like a cog that has gaps between the rollers. So you need to have two rows, which actually have a pass off or a join, line alignment, so that you actually create a smooth concentric circle, if you like, outer surface that it can run smoothly on. And that’s one of the challenges is, to have an omni wheel that runs smoothly, but also has the structural integrity and robustness to take impacts continually. And that’s where the full polymer wheel, as opposed to steel and plastic, comes in. The full polymer, especially in a spider’s web structure, allows it to deform and rebound without failing easily, whereas a lot of the competition The plastic ultimately is displaced by the steel. So you’ll end up getting looser and looser rollers until sometimes they lose a roller. In the early days when we were showing the wheel at trade shows, especially in the US, we get the question, how do we get a replacement roller? I said, well, why? And they said, well, in case we lose one, I said, well, you can’t lose one. It’s all encapsulated. So you’ve either got to wear it out or destroy the wheel. and the wheel’s quite robust, so it takes a fair bit to destroy it. So it has a certain advantages, but beyond just the functional ones is also the manufacturing process. When you’re bringing those different elements together, it’s a much harder thing to put together. Whereas with our molding process, we’ve been able to automate that process almost fully. So it has quite a range of different benefits, if you like, over the competition, both traditional wheel and alternative Omni wheels.
I love it.
It’s just so versatile across so many different industries.
And that’s part of the challenge because as we talked about before, where do you focus?
Yeah.
What application do you actually try and focus on?
Yeah.
We’re never too sure where that opportunity’s going to come from.
I guess that’s the importance of diversifying businesses. So you’re across a few different industries.
Yeah.
Really the outcome of all that. It provides a much more intuitive user experience.
Yeah.
You know, in the fact it has better directional control, better load stability and just simplicity of design that you can make the product design more about the product than having to have these wheels sitting underneath it.
Yeah.
You see these wonderful medical cabinets beautifully designed and they’re sitting up above these big casters that’s swinging around underneath. They look a bit alien to the product itself.
Yeah.
It’s all kind of streamlined design work together.
Yeah. Yeah.
You touched a little bit before, I guess, on some of the industries, but, yeah, what are the main Industries that the wheel is being used in at the moment? And I guess where do you see that future heading?
Well, at the moment, with a, a quite a different product, that one of the, our biggest challenges, the products not broadly known, even engineering students, which I ran into a few weeks ago. One came in to buy a ball transfer unit, which we don’t sell. I asked him what, why he wanted. He said, for a robotic project they’re doing at uni. Now, he was a mechanical engineer, but never heard of an Omni wheel. In fact, there’s very few people in our business that had heard of an Omni wheel before they started with the company or. were introduced to the company.
Yeah.
So that’s enormous challenge. So to introduce it to the market and demonstrate its capability, we’ve become our own OEM to a point. So we’ve developed initially what we call the rotor truck. It’s a self-supporting end truck or end troll. And we’ve been able to build a range of those that do varying things from and generic packages and products through to gas cylinders, to milk crates and bread crates and those types of things, kegs, those sorts of things, which they do it better than any other type of handling aid can.
Yeah.
It’s in that manual materials handling sector. We’ve moved on to there to the conveyors, the automate automated sortation tables that are quite unique and they’re starting to be taken up and replicated by others and we sell them wheels as well.
And that’s kind of in that kind.
Of like- Conveyor automation.
Yeah.
Like airports and food.
Yes, yes. In fact, when you talk about airports, I just came back through Malpensa Airport Milan and the tables are in there in the security, passenger security section where as the totes come through with bags and coats and all that, it’ll transfer the tote across into a separate line if it’s got to be checked and those sorts of things. And that’s by Italian company Gilladoni using our system and wheels in that. They built the system that they use the concept that we’ve pioneered to do that. And then we’re, that was in terminal two, and I think they’re also in terminal one, they had about 10 stations in thermal too. So that was great to see.
Yeah, it must be awesome to see it in the flesh.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then, you know, we’ve got other applications with one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies at the moment. They’re in a final trial of a unidirectional driven system for their parcel takeoff. So we’re hoping that might come to fruition as well. So the conveyor section is a really interesting one for us. It hasn’t really, it’s only about 10% of our revenues at the moment, but it potentially could be quite a major part of it in the near future. So you’ve got the manual handling equipment, it could be trolleys, carts, you’ve got the conveyors, then you’ve got the medtech areas, wheelchairs, patient lifting and handling, assisted living things could be commode chairs, shower chairs, those sorts of things. Because the beauty is without a swivel offset, it goes in and comes out like a drawer. So it’s much easier to manage and control directionally. Plus, because there’s no offset, it’s not jamming up against a wall or a bowl or other things like that. So there’s specific advantages in that. And it’s the same with a wheelchair, footrest, They’ve got to somehow incorporate the room for the casters to swivel around. Whereas because these don’t swivel, you can actually encompass them within that footrest.
And I guess a lot of those spaces you’re talking about in the med tech are sometimes quite small, aren’t they, that you’re swiveling here and there.
Confined spaces and medical staff who have got to move, you know, sometimes quite heavy objects or people. So it sort of can be quite challenging.
Yeah, it’s an interesting space.
And then you’ve got the consumer section. So our plant gliders, they’ve been enormously popular. We’ve only really pushed them in Australia at the moment, but we’ve shipped the container, arrived in the US with them presently, but we’ve got two new ones coming very soon. So that’s been a very popular item. It’s sort of as of pretty much a 96, 97% five star rating and about a 34% return customer rate on it. So we’ve, we’ve thrilled with it. It’s found a real niche.
So is there two new products coming out within the range?
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.
So got a few different things under way at the moment.
Yeah.
I think you touched a little bit on this before, but if you kind of talk about sometimes hurdles in the industry, and you touched on just people understanding what an omnio wheel is, but yeah, what are some of the hurdles you’ve so far?
Obviously when you’re starting out, you’re bootstrapping everything along. So you can’t make a product cheaply when you’re doing that. And I think one of the more recently, a couple of years ago, I was at the K-Fair in Düsseldorf and talked to one of the Arburg reps there and I was explaining what we do and that. And he just said, yep, he said, you can make it the way you make it. but he said, it’s never going to be cheap. He said, if you want to make it cheaply, you’re going to have to spend a lot of money. And I think that’s a really interesting challenge for any startup, but also for any mature business. And when we’re talking about manufacturing, bringing it back into Australia, volume makes so much difference. You’ve got to have capacity to make volume, but you’ve also got to have a market support volume to do that cost effectively. You have to automate. There is no way around it. And people saying to me, what about the jobs? And it’s a valid concern, but the reality for us is without automation, there are no jobs. Because we just can’t compete. And I think that’s where one of the big challenges comes when you start, because you’ve got to go and it’s where a lot of the support will go to early startups. and we jump in on certain things like the EDNG grant or grants that you’ve got eight. And initially at the early stage you think, well, that’s some cash, you know, I can get and put towards this. But where you really need that is later on. If you’re familiar with crossing the chasm. Yeah. When you’re getting to that level and you really need to start to scale, that’s when you need it.
Yeah.
Because you’re spending big money. But it’s the same challenge with the equipment in Australia. I think the 100% tax write off worked very well for generating business for a lot of people and investment in things. And perhaps, you know, you don’t need it to buy a $200,000 vehicle to drive to Sydney. You know, a $5,000 vehicle is going to get you there as well. But if you invest in automation, it’s big dollars and it’s high risk.
Yeah.
And trying to justify writing that off over a number of years makes it extremely difficult because you’ve got to fund it and that can be expensive. And I think government grants are great and they’re fantastic from that perspective, but not everybody benefits from them or can benefit from it. It’s quite a competitive environment. So I think if we’re to bring advanced manufacturing into Australia in scale, you need two things. You need better tax incentives for that, and you need a much stronger buy Australia thing. I think Australia made fantastic.
Yeah.
And they do a great job. But what came out of that video was when you’re buying small quantities, you can’t get it cheaply. But if you’ve got a company that has got volume out of a lot of small orders, they can still produce it cost effectively, maybe still not as cheap as China.
Yeah.
But a lot closer than where we are today. So we need a groundswell. And that, I think that’s what America is searching for. I don’t know whether they’re going about it in the right way, who knows, but they’re the challenges we face. The marketing side, is it been one where we haven’t been good? not necessarily not good, but we haven’t been robust enough in it and proactive enough in it. That’s a challenge for startups as a founder or inventor or that. It’s all about the product. And we think it is. And that’s another challenge because you think it’s, you know, the value of the business 100% the product. But it’s one fifth. You know, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got finance, you’ve got sales, you’ve got all these other challenges around it and timing is an important one. We’ve been lucky. You know, we managed to see a really good contract out of the US and that’s given us the confidence and some margin to reinvest in the business and take it to another level.
Yeah.
And I guess unique for Omni and Wheel versus other Newcastle businesses, what’s that kind of breakdown of, I guess, overseas customers work with? versus local customers?
On a normal year, we’d be running around 50% export, 50% Australian domestic sales. But over the last couple of years, it’s been more like 80 and 90% export and predominantly US. But we’ve got out of the five largest export markets for us has been US first, obviously, but in the top five is China, the UK, Germany and India over the last 12-18 months.
Yeah.
And what do you think that changes where I guess a lot more of your sales are international than local?
What the change was or?
Yeah, like what’s the kind of change in the market or the change in your strategy that’s, I guess, well, we’ve.
Always done international trade shows in the US. So we’ve been going back and forth there since very early in the piece about 2007, I think was the first trade show. And I did, was advised very early in the piece, you can’t go once and think you’ve got to keep turning up every year. So they know you’re serious and you’re going to be there next year and the year after. But also the majors there, we got quite good interest on the stand, but a lot of that early feedback comeback let us know when you’ve got some good reference sites. You know, they’re the next step beyond that chasm where they’re waiting to make sure, you know, you’ve got some good reference points. So that’s an important thing to look for and find, I think.
Yeah.
And it’s hard to get.
Yeah.
You’re not sure we’re gonna get that.
It’s very much a long game, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is a long game.
Yeah.
We see probably an 80-20 mix for us would be good. Yeah, but it could be higher.
Yeah.
Because it’s a product that’s quite global. We’re relatively confident there wouldn’t be another factory in the world that’s solely focused on omnidirectional wheels or has the capacity to manufacture the volume that we can now manufacture.
Yeah.
And I guess you’ve kind of spoke about that new capacity. So you’ve, you know, recently made some significant investments in automation. Could you share with us?
Yeah, we started with the 50 mil wheel, which is for us a very good strategic play because it has application in both the conveyor sector, but also the consumer, but also some B2B product. And we also have quite a number of years left on the page on the way we make that wheel.
So.
We went full hog. We were lucky to get a MM2 grant. Our estimate of what it was going to cost, it was half of what it cost us. We were a bit short on the grant on that front. So it was quite a huge investment for us, but it now puts us in a situation where we can compete globally with that wheel and we don’t have a lot of competition. A lot of our larger customers say, They all want not single source supply. They want at least to be able to buy a product from two suppliers. We are the only place you can get that wheel. There’s a copy in China, but not a good copy.
Yeah.
Because they can’t access most of the other markets. And we even do have a patent on that product in China. How well we can protect it’s another thing.
Yeah.
But now where we used to make that product on four machines and three of those machines had to be attended. There was a bit of waste in that process and a lot of manual trimming and manual assembly. To the point now we’ve got three machines plus an automation cell and, you know, whereas we could, I think, make a couple of a few hundred a day previously with quite a bit of labor, about six people, on that process, those three machines in the automation cell can make, I think it’s up to 650 an hour with very little just attendant technician labor on machines and that sort of stuff.
So impressive, isn’t it?
Yeah, it makes a huge difference. Our cost is quite substantially less than what it was previously.
Yeah.
So We know with that product particularly, we can probably compete with Chinese, even if they try and copy it.
Yeah.
So not many businesses could say that I don’t think.
So, and plus, you know, for them to access some of our markets, they’ve also got to come up against the patent.
Yeah.
I think being Australian made and having patents in the international markets is quite a strategic sort of advantage we have.
Yeah.
And we can make them in mass. And we have the capacity to double our production just by adding one of the three machines and tooling. So it’s got some scalability to it.
Yeah.
Now.
And so we’re now in the process of automating the larger wheels and those. We’ve got two cells, each cells made up of three machines again, and two of them are linked by automation. We’ve made that one fairly interoperable. So our wheels from 90 mil wheel off to 180 can run on those machines. So we can run about four different wheel sizes on those same automation machines.
Yeah.
And we can, I think, produce off the two cells, we can produce around 6,300 wheels in a 24 hour run. And where we had, I think, six to seven people on per cell per shift, we now can do it with one person on that cell. But a lot of that was to do with the clipping, which again, it’s quite a dexterous process and you had to move the staff around so that they weren’t on that task for too long. But also to run shifts, we had to have basically 20 people, and if people don’t turn up, your whole thing goes out. And if you don’t have the work, you can’t run the shifts, so you can’t have all those people on. So it’s just impossible. But with one person, we can run that with permanence. And then if we’re a bit shy on work and we want to cut shifts back, we can at least occupy those people in a day shift. And there’s certain elements there that can be run lights out so we can run certain components without anybody in the factory.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you go home at night, turn the lights out, come back the next day. Clear the product.
So you pretty much could be a 24/7 operation.
Yeah.
Ultimately, we hope to get to that point. We don’t know that we’ll run it unmanned, but that is potentially possible.
Very cool. I love the new machines.
Yeah.
I love watching them.
Same. It’s very mesmerizing.
But what we’ve realized with the automation and with the higher level of production, making it consistently at the same level of performance, functionality and quality every time in volume gets more and more difficult. And if you’re making it volume and you get something wrong, you make a lot of waste.
Yeah.
So there’s high risk to it as well. Cause plastics perform, you know, different heat, different conditions, whole range of issues come about. So there’s a certain amount of know-how, you know, we get pushed a lot. Can you make them overseas for us? And we say, it’s not that easy. You know, I say, oh, we don’t need it to be perfect, but then if it’s not perfect, someone’s complaining. It’s not the same feel of that hole.
And does that mean you have to factor in the environment and how, like the temperatures of the environment that they’re working in?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can’t manage all that, so, but you’ve got to ultimately say, we know that’s the wheel. So we can run different programs. that we might get a more free flowing roller. But then, you know, we’ve had recently customers that we want it to be firmer. It’s got to be as per that one last year, you know, so you need to have them really tight.
Yeah.
And that’s why also we’ve invested in German machines to make them on because we have a lot more control and consistency over that.
Yeah, I guess we are consistent. So we definitely be key.
So you’ve got the machines, then you’ve got the tooling. and then you’ve got the technical know-how around it, how to achieve it.
Yeah.
We’re learning more and more that there’s a certain level of competitive advantage there. Doesn’t stop people competing against you and you miss out in that thing. But ultimately people do come back to what lasts and performs.
Yeah.
You got to have some confidence in that.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I guess being in a startup business is lots of lessons along the way. what lessons might you be able to share with other startups on their journey?
I think there’s a number of things. One is the importance of marketing. So me coming from construction, you know, you’re only, you’re as good as your, your last project and your current price.
Yeah.
But we’ve learned even in construction that the marketing is quite an important element. But with a product and a new product and coming to market, it’s just instrumental. And I’ve had other people talk to me about that on the same level. And I say, you,’d put a much larger part of your budget towards marketing. Because people try and save on marketing. The other thing is I’d say is go harder earlier. Either fail fast, but don’t, because it’s a long haul. Especially, it’s very difficult to scale tangible hard products, like a hardware product or a wheel or a component. as averse to piece of software. It’s not anywhere as easy to scale. You really need to move fast and work out whether you’ve got something. I think there’s always three questions. Does it solve a problem? Does the customer care about the problem? If they care, are they prepared to spend to solve it? And if you don’t get three yeses, you’re probably not on a winner to start. And you don’t know sometimes it’s like, if you ask that about an iPhone, we probably got no. So sometimes it’s a leap of faith. But I’d say the marketing, picking the right partners, like inventors and founders and that sort of stuff. We love the product and we think the product’s everything. And I’m guilty of this. So we don’t like to give too much up. You know, we want to own it all. But the reality is it’s only part of the equation. It’s probably 20% at the end of the day. If you don’t have all those other things, the finance, the marketing, all working, the timing right, access to the markets or the distribution, you’re never going to get there. All you’re going to do what we do is take 20 years to get there. And the only reason we’re still here is I had another business that could at least pay me a salary.
While.
The other one’s not.
Yeah.
So, Pick your partners and don’t only pick them for financial reasons. You pick them for strategic reasons. And you always think, oh, X will get me here. It won’t. It’ll be five times. So your partners need to be aware that it’s going to take an ongoing investment over a long period of time. And that’s where founders don’t like to give up too much or inventors don’t like to give up too much. And I think probably a lot of good inventions and products vile because of that reason. We’ve been lucky because I’ve been in a fortunate situation, which has been great, but it’s also a trap, you know, because you just keep putting in.
I guess, yeah, a lot of people wouldn’t have that benefit of having the two.
That’s where I feel for startups.
Yeah.
But I think understanding that and going, right, you know, if I end up with 20 of it, it becomes about the size of the pie, not the piece of the pie. but it’s very difficult for the inventor or the founder to accept that fact early in the piece.
Yeah.
Have you had moments where you almost walked away or you’ve always had that kind of positive vision?
No, I haven’t, but I’m a very obsessive person. And so, you know, when I take on something, I sort of beat it to death till I either it works or I die. So whether it’s sport or whether it’s business. So I’m quite obsessive, but I’ve had, you know, my friends saying, you’ve got to draw a line in the sand. You know, you’ve got to stop this. And a couple of years ago, I remember a few of them got me to lunch. It was all about training. You’ve got to stop this, you know.
But like an intervention.
And I said, and people go, why? Why can’t you draw a line? Because I said, the day I do, I know I’m that far from success.
Yeah.
And so I think that perseverance is critical. And so if someone’s starting up and they’ve got a product, they’d really have to be prepared for a long haul. One angel investor I know, he said consistently, he said, I’m now convinced it’s a 10 or 15 year thing for each business. You know, it’s different if it’s software where you can do it, but he said, if it’s a tangible product, how on 10 or 15 years?
Which a lot of people factor in that timeline.
Everybody thinks it’s an overnight success, you know, but what they don’t see is everything’s gone before. If you go back to when Henry Guile was working on what he called the Ezekiel wheel, I think he was on Beyond 2000, if you can. Might be before your time.
No, it’s not.
So.
But he was on Beyond 2000. Yeah, we put Graham on the new inventors. Yeah. So, yeah.
You’ve spoken a little bit before, I guess, the Omniwheel being involved in some industries around automation and robotics and things. Where do you see the future of those industries?
The industries themselves.
Yeah.
For us, specifically in regard to the Omniwheel. Well, I think we’re ideally positioned from that perspective. I mean, you know, some of the biggest growth areas are obviously robotics, automation, those sorts of things. Safety drives a lot of and drives a lot of the ergonomic equipment.
Yeah.
From a manual handling point of view, the wheel is ideally suited to that. The rotor truck’s a perfect example. I think we’ve got Woolworths, we’re quite a good partner. They have one of our hand trucks in nearly every store handling milk crates. They did a full analysis on it and I was quite surprised at what they’d save in a year compared to what they had to spend with us. I said, I didn’t charge you enough. And they said, to like that. But anyway, when it comes to ergonomics and especially with manual work where you’ve got 18 workers and a lot of younger people don’t want those roles, ergonomic aids become very, very important. So when you’ve got ergonomic manual handling equipment, which the wheel can enable quite easily, it’s a real plus. Then you have conveyor automation. is huge and the wheel, especially the 50 mil wheel, is just perfect in that. And so we see that being, that could end up being 50 or 80% of their business. And as I mentioned, we’ve got probably one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world trialing a solution at the moment that features our wheel. In addition, at Promat, which is the US’s largest materials handling show runs every two years, has a sister show every second year. The MHI Materials Handling Industry of the US run it and they give out four innovation awards and a startup award. Well, the best new innovation and the best startup award went to our customers, which use our wheeling part of their solution. so that gives you an idea of what’s happening in that arena.
Yeah.
So that was quite exciting for us. We had about seven or eight exhibitors at that show with our products on stand in one form or another. So that was quite exciting for us. So conveyor automation, those sorts of things, quite potentially huge robotic mobility. So when it comes to robotic mobility. A lot of people still use two fixed wheels and some swivel casters, but it’s a bit like three-point turns, whereas with the Omni wheelbase, it can rotate pirouette across the floor, do a figure eight, move in any direction. Now, when you talk about swarm technology, which is a lot of robots or drones working in one environment, They need to be able to do it effectively and quick, moving any position around one another. So that becomes important once we start to get to that next level of mobility with robots. So we think we’re perfectly, because we probably have one of the very few Omni wheels in the world that’s capable of that to any level of efficacy.
Yeah.
So that’s exciting.
It is exciting.
And then you have, as I said, the medical patient handling and emergency EVAC and assisted living areas where even rehabilitation equipment, because trying to learn to walk again and even age walkers, you see people and they’re sort of wobbling around with them and they can’t pivot off them or anything else. So perfect for that, strollers. So runaway strollers can be quite a, an issue.
Yeah.
Whereas an Omniwheel is a little bit more dependable. It doesn’t react to an incline the same way as a swivel caster does.
Yeah.
I think it’s going to have an impact on all those things.
So many different applications.
Yeah. Yeah.
Are there any other projects or developments we haven’t already discussed?
No, I think that the, the, the most exciting one in there at the moment is the, the current automation.
Yeah.
Project and that’s looking very exciting. We’ve got a new 90mm single wheel for the conveyor coming. So that’s in its final stages of tooling at the moment.
Yeah.
And that actually enables us to condense our automated conveyor tables, the pitch, which enables us to move 100 by 100mm packages quite consistently. And that’s one of the holy grails for the e-commerce industry because they’ll handle large and small packages. But a lot of systems struggle to handle the smaller packages. So that’s well under, we’ve got first body sample. So that wheel at the moment, that once we refine that, we’ll be moving to the roller and we’ll be then moving into the next phase of that. development and we’re also working on new components for manual tables and that. So we’re looking to roll out a broader range of offering in regard to both the automated multi-directional table, a uni-directional table that we can still push things either ways that that can help align packages or do a 90 or a 180 degree transfer and then a manual one as an alternative to ball transfer tables, which is a huge market in itself. You know, with ball transfers, they have to use a hard ball. Nylon or polymer ones tend to grit up. So it’s generally an aluminum or steel ball, which can Mark surfaces either way, but you can’t drive them there. They’re only free flowing. So the Omni wheel offers a non-marking solution to that. We can run softer, different roller diameters to handle different opportunities like that.
Yeah.
As well as, you know, when we go out to innovators and designers, it really enables them to design products around the wheel with functionality that’s not available with anything else.
Yeah.
Whether it’s a good cast, a good quality caster or a cheap quality caster, they still have the same problem about the swivel. offset because you don’t have a big difference in functionality. You’re doing quality, but not functionality. It tends to become more of, well, what’s the difference? And it becomes commoditized. So it’s a race to the bottom price wise rather than do something in a totally different way. You know, so if you, you look at most plan dollies and they’ll have four caster wheels on them, some might have more. But they tend to then get more and more expensive. So they try and limit state of four. But every office chair has five. There’s a reason for that. You don’t want to fall over. But no one really wants to tip their expensive, beautiful pot over either. So we’re finding people, you know, they’re looking at us and saying, yeah, they’re expensive, but they’re worth it.
Yeah.
You know, and I think that’s real. We’re working on bringing it Costs down and that’s part of the new tooling and everything else. But people do, you know, when it solves a problem, it’s like price is important, they say, only in the absence of value.
Yeah.
So I think with that product, we’ve been able to provide value.
Yeah.
Long lasting.
Yeah. Yeah.
Now we just need to get the costs down where it’s more, you know, acceptable, I think. to people, but then and then be able to scale it globally. Because they’re all, I went into a couple of stores in Toulouse in France the other day and I photographed all the things. One of the wonderful things there I noticed is they’re all made in France. And I’m thinking, oh, that’s great. They’re not coming from China. And I think the French maybe from that point of view are quite you know, patriotic.
Yeah.
And that they were good quality products. But it said to me, there’s a, there’s a keen, key Market here.
Are there some key people that have been mentors that are inspired you in this journey?
Throughout my career.
Yeah.
Well, lots of people, really. And still, you know, learning off, off different people, including those I’m working with at Omnia at the moment. You know, it was a, quite a new area for me, but if I, if I go back to say, Gervin times, the CEO there was Paul Peterson, the chairman, and he was enormously motivational individual to work for and tough boss for most people’s standards. I’m not sure how he’d get on today, but for me, he was an enormously motivational person to work for and he put a lot of faith in young people. We sort of threw you in the deep end where you thought, I don’t have the experience for this. And he’d go, just get on with it. You can do it. and so he was a guy I guess I got a lot from, still talk to him today over 45, 47 years, a relationship there. So he was very instrumental. I don’t think I’d have probably achieved what I have without his mentorship early in the piece. He was very progressive from personal growth and management and that sort of things. And also the culture in that business, it ultimately went broke. because we went public and got big and everything else. We were lucky to leave 12 months before. People said, oh, you guys were smart. And I said, well, not really. I had shares that I didn’t sell. So it wasn’t that smart. But we took a lot from that company, but we were extremely lucky because we picked up some very good people out of that for the business we’d set up. Alan Ambler was another guy. He introduced total quality management principles very early in the piece. and then others all through. Johnny Neighbour was one of our site managers. I worked as one of the supervisors early in the piece. I learned a lot about, you know, projects and project management from him. I remember he said, we were walking around another job later in the period where I was his boss, and he said, how do you know that? We haven’t got there yet. I said, well, you actually taught me how to do that early in the piece. And then Gregor Milson, my best friend and business partner for many years, he’s a very pragmatic individual, doesn’t sweat the small stuff. He was always good at keeping your feet on the ground and he’d move fast, whereas I don’t think I ever mastered it properly, but he was great to work with and I miss that as a partnership going forward. But we’re still great mates. I’ve just been to his son’s wedding in Italy.
Lovely.
And that’s been great. Oh, there’s numerous people Jerry Taylor is one of the guys I’ve worked with. He’s a designer out of the US and does a lot of our or did originally a lot of our design work. And we were doing that remotely across on Skype. This is desktop sharing very early in the piece. And we designed the product on the screen and that sort of stuff. And I haven’t really worked with anyone like Jerry. He was just very fast but very knowledgeable about plastics and molding and that sort of thing. So I learned an enormous amount from him, whereas I knew nothing about plastics to start with. But we had a great working dynamic to be able to knock a product out very quickly. So a lot of our early designs and products were through Jerry and that was great. And then other Dick VerWayne out of one of our early distributors, still a distributor in the US and and Greg Eckery out of Magline in the US. They’ve been great instrumental things of different kernels of wisdom at times that I’ve picked up and maintained those relationships. There’s lots of people. Yeah, that’s hard.
Yeah.
At this age, you’ve had a lot of people pass through your life in one form or another that I’ve generally picked something up from them all. I hope in times I’ve been able to give something back.
Yeah.
Over the years, Omni Wheel have won a number of different awards. I’ve got a few listed down here. So last year for the Hunter Manufacturing Awards, you were the manufacturer of the year for less than 50 employees for excellence in manufacturing capability. You yourself was recognized as a manufacturing leader. And then you’ve also won a Hunter Net Award for in 2023 as an export winner. What are those awards meant to you as far as, you know, recognition or just overall impact to your business?
In business, whether you’re a startup or you’re a mature business, sometimes you’re in a pretty dark, deep trench, you know, and, and I think it’s hard work. And sometimes you, you don’t look up and look at what, well, we have achieved something or run somewhere. So for us, because our Market is probably more external of Newcastle, it’s not local. there’s not a direct impact, but that recognition, I mean, really gives you a lift whether you think you deserve it or not. And you think, I don’t know that we’re there yet, you know, but it really does with yourself and your team go, oh, okay, you know, we must be doing. Okay. So I think it’s quite that recognition is so important to a lot of businesses to just keep you going.
Yeah.
You know, and, and that, and I think that for a lot of businesses are local, it can be even more powerful. As I said earlier, you know, we probably haven’t been as good at marketing as we should be, and so we haven’t made the best use of it that we could have. And I encourage any local business to really, you know, use it. That’s what it’s there for, you know? I think Jackie, Daly would tell you, you know, get on with it. Yeah, get out there with it. But I think, you know, they do the recognition, they provide the opportunity for that. They said recently, you know, just the process of putting it, it helps you focus too on, well, what have we achieved, you know?
Yeah. Yeah.
Maybe we’re doing a little bit better than we thought, you know?
That’s the thing, I think to the outside world, you you know, you don’t realize how well you’re doing sometimes. So, yeah.
So it’s been, I think, a great thing for our team, especially.
Yeah.
I think that’s where we’ve got the most out of it. But two, internationally, it helps us.
Yeah.
You know, it gives us a certain level of credibility we wouldn’t have otherwise.
Yeah.
And we can use that on the website, we use it in blogs and posts. And so, you know, when you’re dealing with, with international customers, they want to know, well, who are you? What are you? You know, you’re just a little shop in the back corner or what sort of thing?
Yeah.
Well done.
I think everyone was super impressed when you got your award last year as well.
So no one was more surprised than I. I didn’t even know I was in for it. So I was a bit shocked and taken back.
Not very well deserved.
Yeah.
And thank you.
It’s we’re talking about the Hunter as a region. Is there a reason you decided to build your career here in the Hunter?
No, it was more just a family situation at the time. I’d spent three years in Brisbane with the construction business. And at that point, it was time for me to move back to Sydney. We’d had a project, probably the closest year we’ve ever had to losing money. We did a project at Katara actually, and it was quite a difficult project and that. And I thought, I need to spend more time in the Sydney office. But at that time, my wife wasn’t that keen on moving back to Sydney. We were going to build a house in Brisbane. Really love living in Brisbane. It was great. But she’d always said, if anything happened to me, she’d come straight to Newcastle. So I said, well, I’ve got a commute between Sydney and Brisbane anyway, and I can do that from Newcastle. So I thought, we’ll move here for 12 months. That’ll be it. And then we’ll move back to Sydney. Or didn’t leave Newcastle. It’s pretty good lifestyle. Yeah. So I think I’d rate Newcastle as one of the best living cities in Australia. I think the natural amenity here with the working harbor and the beaches and the Hunter, it’s fabulous.
Yeah.
And what about running a business here? Like, what are the advantages of having a manufacturing business in the Hunter?
Look, there’s difficulties to it, you know, because you’re competing against mining, which is difficult, you know, both on a cost level for for employment and different things. But it’s such a good region and there’s still such a good sense of community with HunterNet and those sorts of things as HunterNet’s thing and as Ivan puts it, the power of many, I think is a wonderful thing. And it is quite cohesive, you know. So while we don’t necessarily source a lot locally because most of our stuff comes in, we have raw materials, no one makes plastics really in Australia. So they might compound them and do different things, but there’s no real plastics manufacturers in Australia and in certain other bearings and those sorts of things. They all come in. So we had a couple local suppliers of bearing things, sheet metal and the likes, but we make most of that stuff in our factory. That camaraderie and that support you’ve got there and the Hunter Defence is another opportunity those sorts of things. So there’s great benefits as well as the lifestyle. But more than anything, I’d say just that sense of community.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think Hunter Business and Hunter Net do a great job and the Hunter Manufacturing Awards, yeah, great things. You wouldn’t have that in Sydney.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just wouldn’t exist.
And what about just the manufacturing sector in the Hunter in general? Where do you see that in the next five to 10 years?
I think it’s a great place to manufacture and I think it’s just going to grow.
Yeah.
And that’s the good thing about those groups is you meet other manufacturers and you see what they’re doing and that’s also quite exciting. There’s stuff happening all about.
Yeah.
Lots going on.
Yeah.
And I guess what about yourself when you’re not an Omneo and you know, working with your businesses, what else do you do you do in your spare time?
Well, I’m a fairly obsessive person. As I said, so it hasn’t been a lot recently, but I’ve started to take some more holidays and travel. I’ve just been away for two weeks in Europe.
Yeah.
I like traveling, but activity wise, it’s generally, you know, I’ve got some friends. I’ll go for a ride on an e-bike with. We just stick to the paths and that we don’t ride roads or anything. Or Glenrock, I think that I had, I had my lesson in Glenrock, so we should be take a more passive approach, but generally snow skiing when it gets to Winter. Always something going on there. I love snow skiing. So I’m a little bit wedded to work that I’m trying to change that.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
You’re welcome.
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