Innovating Sideways: How Zone Manufacturing Turned Core Strengths into Growth with Dave Biggar

Full Transcript

Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.

There should be always the percentage of anyone or any business that you are looking sideways, but how much you’re looking sideways and how quick you move sideways should be, you know, the textbook would say based on your capacity and how you can cope with that. Now, I doubt I’ll ever be the person that will fully stick to those rules, but being conscious of it, I think is the key thing. Before we get started, the team here at the Coast and Commerce podcast want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where this podcast is created.

the Kabi Kabi and Jinibara people. We honour their rich culture of storytelling as we share the inspiring stories of business leaders across the Sunshine Coast. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging. Let’s get on with the show.

G’day and welcome back to the Coast and Commerce podcast. This is the show where we interview inspiring business leaders from across the Sunshine Coast to hopefully inspire you in whatever you do in your business on the coast here. So one of those businesses that we’ve got here today is, is Dave Biggar, who’s a CTO from Zone Manufacturing. Now you may have heard of Zone RV is probably one of the main companies that you guys have under that Zone Manufacturing belt. But Dave, welcome to the show. I’m really excited to kind of dive into the Zone story. Awesome. Thanks for having me, mate.

Can you tell us a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about your story before we get into it? you know, prior to zone, like how long you’ve been on the coast, like what were you doing? What led you into kind of the manufacturing industry? well, look, I grew up on the sunny coast, grew up up around Noosa. I think my storyline starts there at a young age. My dad took me down to Noosa Yacht Club and got me into sailing. spent my sort of whole teenage years racing yachts and, sort of

in and around that one national titles and competed at a world level. And I think within that, I started to understand, you know, high performance yachts, which are made out of composites. And it was a bit of a natural progression for me when I finished school, I went off and did some other stuff, but I really wanted to get into business pretty early. and, you know, my, my, father and my family have been pretty entrepreneurial. So yeah, I started my first business when I was about 22.

called Stallion Marine and went into boat building. I asked my grandfather for a loan or some help. I was working away and I said, mate, I think if I build a 40 foot catamaran and rustled together a bit of a team and we built it and finished it, I could probably sell it and make a profit. And he thought the storyline was all right. So he helped me along and supported me with a bank loan. And that’s where I started Stallion Marine.

Look, I got into boat building, I guess. I employed some guys and a shed out the back of Yandina and we started building boats, but sort of high performance boats, because that’s what I was into, lighter, stronger, lot of emphasis on how we build things light and strong. And for the next 10 years, with a good team of guys and mates, we built big one-off custom boats all the way up to 60s, 70 foot boats, know, worth in the millions.

But probably was never that leaping ahead in making profits and running good business. I I learned lots of hard lessons of what not to do and I guess what to do. But that sort of evolved into more industrial fiberglass businesses, which then got me into RVs and has got to where it is today, I guess the last 10 years of.

working on the coast and I have set up companies down in Victoria as well, manufacturing, but you know, I’ve chosen to come back up here and spend the majority of my time here. but yeah, the last 10 years has sort of been sinking my teeth into sort of growing businesses and figuring a few things out and, and, getting us to where we are today. So stallion Marine, is that still around? It actually is. it’s a business that I had sitting there with a bunch of losses.

and I sort of run my own personal R and D business for the moment. I’ve got sort of guys that just work within my own team on my own projects and that business ABN is still alive and, and we, it chugs along, but you wouldn’t ever be able to find it or know anything about it. It’s just a trading name there. Okay. So you kind of made that transition still in the world of composites, but into RV, into caravans. and.

You know, what was that point where you realized that, you know, maybe moving from boats into, into like caravans and RVs is the way to go. think, really it’s just the light bulb moment of going, know, Jesus, we’re going to try and, you know, build a one off thing and just keep trying to grunt through that and you’re only as good as you know, the last product you made. and sort of looking a bit sideways and going, you know, what could we do where we could be a bit more production, get a bit more rhythm going, you know, get

get more unskilled people in and try and scale a business up that way. And I guess that’s where we sort of were looking around and by being in an industrial fiberglassing business, we’re servicing a lot of different industries there and looking around and seeing what’s going on. And obviously I set up a business called

CL composites, it was a joint venture between a business we had here and another company in Sydney and we said let’s go down to Melbourne and set up a fibreglass sandwich panel business to service all of the RV manufacturers, which 90 % of the RVs in Australia are manufactured down in Melbourne, plus a lot of the truck bodies. So we said let’s go down there and set up a business. We got a contract with one of the bigger truck body builders and tried to penetrate the RV business.

RV industry down there, is, you know, up until now has been made up of timber wall framed, tin cladded vans, which is like super old technology. There’s not a lot smart about it. They have a lot of issues. We thought let’s go put a plant, composite laminating plant in the middle of this place called Campbellfield. And there’s 140 caravan manufacturers there. It’s a really strange market in Australia with how many.

Caravan manufacturers there are Justin Campbell Justin Campbell feel okay, and we injected straight in and I thought this is we’re gonna set up the mint here We’re just gonna get get into this market and absolutely cream it it was far from that, you know, it was it was You know a bunch of false starts and yes, we did penetrate it. Yes We got into it, but that’s where I learned a lot about the RV market what it was how they were building how they absolutely struggle like

most industries with change and adopting new methodologies. And while I was down there running that business, was flying up and down every week spending two or three days in Melbourne, two or three days back up here in Queensland. And I’d sort of had enough of going to Melbourne and I’m like, we got an opportunity to sell that business and other company down there that sort of wanted us and we sold it.

but I came back up to Queensland and I was like, we’re, we’re, we’re going to start building caravans and, you know, with a boat building background and a, business within, making, you know, the bodies of caravans, the recipe was sort of there. Yeah. And obviously right from the start, were using composites to build those caravans, right? So, using that, that skill that you honed your skillset in, in boat building and making them lighter, faster.

Stronger right and they’re just bringing that into I guess the caravan industry which at that stage was that relatively new I wouldn’t say fully new, you know composites and fiberglass have been in in the RV industry since you know, even back in the 70s but Obviously the way in which I had learned how to build a lightweight high-performance yacht with modern more modern Technologies was was not how any you know, a lot of it was in the RV industries

and definitely not anywhere near what, you know, some of our product and how it’s being produced today, but 10 years ago, yes. think our biggest thing was we came into the industry and I associated timber with rots in caravans. And I think a lot of the market did and does, and I just said, well, let’s remove timber out of the whole caravan, not even the interior, no plywood in cabinets, anything like that. Our van started on day one as 100% composite.

you know, a mix of different composite materials that you could put the thing on the bottom of a river for a year and bring it back up and none of the materials would be affected. And that was, think, one of our main competitive edges coming into the market. People understood that message. Yeah. So as you launched, that was Zone RV at that stage, right from the start, that’s what it was called. As you launched that, what were some of the challenges of getting that to market? Like it’s pretty competitive, I imagine, as far as like other caravan manufacturers. Yeah.

Look, think competitive but a big market. we were able to, you know, bringing change into a market where we’re not necessarily drastic change, but bringing some change and being, you know, new people. You’ve got to get the early adopters and the people that are, you know, open to looking sideways. But I think the challenges really are in manufacturing is designing the product is easy.

figuring out production, making production happen is really hard. you know, getting into that and trying to change, get a shift of going, we’re boat builders and we do things one at a time and trying to set up lines and teams, different divisions and trying to go through that whole process was challenging.

Building teams is challenging, building new groups of people and asking everyone to work friendly is challenging. Kicking off businesses where it’s still relatively small in the RV industry, but you sort of go, okay, all of a sudden we’re doing one of these a week, but one of them’s $150,000. All of sudden you’re doing two. Jeez, you’ve got $300,000 coming in the door a week.

you know, killing it from day one. you, you know, you’re straight into cashflow problems. You’re straight into every conceivable problem when you’re scaling or trying to grow a business quickly. Everything’s coming at you from every angle, really. But no, was, to be honest, a very good learning curve. And I think probably in those early days of zone RV, I’d already made this shift into, you know, you just got to start finding.

good people to get on your team. know, nobody does anything by themselves. that just that click and the understanding that, yep, we got to pay people, you got to pay people to do all of this work. And we got to do our best at trying to find good people to do it. So I think that that was the, one of the big shifts in the early days, but that was also the help that, you know, grunted us through those, those, those early days too. Yeah. So

you got through those early days, obviously some success, right? So can you paint a picture of where zone RV is today? And then we’ll talk more about the bigger picture as well. So Zone RV is now owned, been a bit of shift in it, even in the last 12 months, where we’ve put it under a group name zone manufacturing. So we’ve got multiple business units running under Zone Manufacturing and Zone RV is one of those. It’s definitely the biggest out of

that group of businesses, there’d be about 250 to 300 people working in that business. And how many caravans are you pushing through each week or month or whatever? So they’re sort of doing 10 to 12 a week, maybe 600 this year, the price on them has gone up. they’re sort of probably closer to an average price up around 200 now.

We’ve three or four different facilities. mostly in Coolum, All in Coolum. All in Coolum, yeah. So we’ve been lucky enough to sort of keep grabbing land and building buildings and acquiring more land and getting a bit of stock in front of us so that we can keep growing. So yeah, no, it’s definitely a, it’s a fairly vertical business. You know, we’ve got metal fabrication, we’re in composites, we’ve got full cabinet divisions.

and obviously assembly lines. So if you looked in the caravan industry, we would be up there as one of the most vertical, you know, across disciplines, a lot of contracting, like any businesses, you can contract a bunch of your stuff out, but we have chosen to, you know, try and master the art of a few different things, not just assembly, of which again, is our competitive edge. We control our destiny and we’re, you know, we’re forever.

Half the reason we’re doing a lot of the things ourselves, because the way in which we’ve chosen to make our bodies, our cabinets, wouldn’t say our chassis so much, but we couldn’t find those other companies in Australia to support us either as a technology or with a capacity that could feed us. Yeah, very cool. as you think about right from the start of even stallion marine, it was kind of, you

figuring out your, your strength, right? Which was in, like you said, composites and understanding the materials and how to manufacture with that. And then you, kind of looked sideways as you described it and you moved into, into RV and caravans. And then you’ve continued to look sideways, right? So you talked about zone manufacturing as being this, you know, relatively new parent company, I guess. So tell us about what’s under that umbrella of zone manufacturing, because it’s still, it’s still composites, right? Yeah.

So probably the next big division sitting besides own RV is one composites and one composites is I guess an enabler of that key. I call it the global structure. If it’s a caravan, that’s the body. If it’s a boat, it’s, you know, the holes and all of the structure that holds it together. So for us to dream up businesses again, where we get our competitive edge from being lighter and stronger, you know, that’s one of those key areas. It was our background, but to be honest,

If I could have had found another big contractor in fibreglass and composites in Australia that had the ability to use the methods, which is, know, vacuum bagging, vacuum infusion, light RTM, it probably doesn’t mean a lot to you, but they’re processes within composites that we use to make components. And that finding another business in Australia that could feed us with those sort of methodologies just isn’t there.

So really it left us no choice but to set it up, which wasn’t a discipline. I was always up and wanted probably a business unit like that. But that’s there and it in its own right now is in two different divisions. It’s got a production division, which just makes parts. So basically put a fiberglass mold in there and we have a…

not just a methodology for the part, we, you know, we’ve designed a whole methodology for our production lines and how that production line works. And, you know, we continue to be as automated with robots and digital infrastructure within those places to, to be, you know, we mightn’t be the best at it, but you got to get in and get going in these things. Otherwise you’ll never be good at it. But look, that division has been there probably.

18 months coming up to two years now with rapid change and growth in just how many parts they’re putting out and in revenue. So that’s one division in their own unit and the other division within one composites is how you make those molds or how you make shapes to make molds. And that’s where our big 3D printer is.

We’ve got that big large format printer. I was going to mention that. Is that like the only one in Australia? that what I’ve heard? No, there are other ones in Australia, but ours is by far the biggest. Give us a sense of that scale because you know, it’s some pretty cool technology, right? So when you say big, how big is this 3D printer? Yeah, so it’s pretty big. It’s 25 meters long by five meters wide by two meters high. Can a whole caravan?

You could print a whole caravan. would not be 3D printing a caravan would not be the lightest approach. So the 3D printer doesn’t actually, the large format 3D printer doesn’t actually make us components that would be the end use components. What it does is it’ll 3D print the mold, which most of the time in composites, we need to lay up composites over something to form a shape. So it helps us form that shape and forming that shape quickly.

And efficiently is typically not something that happens in the composite industry, making those forms and shapes in the past have been hand made things where, know, we’re the prototype kind of in a way. then yeah, that’s it. That’s it. So, you know, we’re turning them, we’re doing all this work in, in CAD and turning a machine on at night and coming back in the next morning. And, know, this thing that could have taken months traditionally, you know, we’re doing in a night.

And that’s just accelerating how quick we can introduce things into our composite plant to then feed an assembly line that might be a product. So it’s a really key bit of infrastructure and that other facility because it just makes shapes and anybody outside of our business that comes to us and says, Hey guys, we’ve got a problem. We need to get a high performance composite product and we need it really quickly. And we say, well,

you know, we’re the guys for the job. What do you got? Show us your card. Let’s, let’s get into this. so it’s, there’s a lot of exciting projects funneling into that place. That’s a place where I probably spend most of my time. Yeah. often one of the differentiators in business is one of three things it’s, know, higher quality, faster, or, you know, better performance, you know, that kind of thing. Right. and since like you kind of figured out how to do all three of those things.

Yes, yes and no. They’re all challenges, but I think what we’re getting good at is, and it’s taken me a long time, but just understanding which part, those exact things you just said, you where do we need to focus on this particular project? That may be very different to the next project and a customer might walk in a door with something completely different to that and understanding that and then being able to tie that to methodology and process. mean, design for manufacturers.

probably a technical term for it using budgets, equipment, what’s your capacity, how quick can we move on it all? And that dial moves on every different project. The understanding of how to pull that together quickly and end up at something that is as close to getting it right quickly is a challenge. And that’s probably what I’d say our teams, we focus on and we’re pretty passionate about that.

But yeah, it can move. We can have someone say, come in the door and say, hey, we need something tomorrow. We don’t need you to get it 80, 100%. And this type of language is coming out of, know, projects all the way through to defense, by the way, know, defense is saying, hey, don’t get, we’ve got a problem. Can you help us? Don’t aim for 100%. Aim for 80%, get there quickly. And we’ll iterate again before you even got to 100 on the second one.

Um, and that’s good to be honest. That’s actually my favourite spot is spending too long to get to a hundred percents. I get sick of a project and I’m over it. Getting to things at 80 % and keeping a customer happy and, and, being able to get a second one, another iteration out that may be way closer to a hundred percent. It’s a fun, it’s a, it’s a lot fun way to work. Yeah. Awesome. So when you think about like really what you’re talking about there is innovation, right? And looking to do things better.

within an organisation. So what role do you think innovating has played in the success so far of zone manufacturing? Look, I’d have to look at the exact definition for innovation again, but I do remember reading it once where, know, innovations, something along the lines of, you know, looking around, it’s not necessarily dreaming something up that’s brand new and no one has ever seen, but it’s looking around and using a mixed

bunch of things that if you put them all together is probably innovating. I think, you know, we’ve done that and we do do that because

Getting stuff out there to market doesn’t necessarily mean go and try a whole lot of brand new stuff, start a business based on that, and if you stop executing it, you’re gonna die. If you can get some proven methodology and in some areas that you know you might already be good at, but still bundling them all together and if that equals innovate, then I guess that’s what we’re doing. I’ve never technically liked the word innovate.

But it is sort of what we’re doing and we’re just sort of applying similar formulas across some different business sectors that are all achieving a similar result. I guess you would call it innovating. I think what I really love about that answer is that there’s something there that anyone in business can take away whether they’re manufacturing or not. And it’s the idea of like, it’s to grow and improve your business and to do better in what you’re doing.

It’s not necessarily about the brand new thing, like, you know, throw everything out and just try and find some brand new thing or invent something new. Often it’s about like, what, what are you doing? Well, what can you make slight tweaks to? What can you take from somewhere else and bring into your business and, know, make it all work better? I think that is innovative. I think that is, I think it’s about, you know, being creative about putting the pieces together in a way that makes a better whole.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, outside of just the manufacturing nuts and bolts, you know, really a key part of our innovation and the bigger thing for us is how we innovate digital systems, which is again, it’s just another piece of the puzzle that we’re trying to drag into some methodologies, but how are we innovating through all of the digital flow?

How are we innovating by bringing AI into our daily lives and making things better? But I guess in the same context, it’s all innovating. It’s making things better and it’s making sure you’re looking outside your four walls. It’s not copying to look sideways and see someone else doing something well. It might be a snippet of process. It might be a snippet of software, but bring it in and add it to your inventory and that’s innovating.

Yeah, I love it. So this is the coast and commerce podcast. So let’s talk about the Sunshine Coast. You are a businesses proudly based here on the Sunshine Coast and quite a significant employer as well as far as scale of businesses on the sunshine coast. So tell us about why the Sunshine Coast for you. Like, I mean, you could have been in Melbourne, right? Um, you could be anywhere. Yes. Could be overseas. Like why, why here? I don’t know. mean, the Sunshine Coast is

one of the best ranked as one of the best places in the world. So I guess I don’t find myself unusual to wanting warning and loving being here. But yeah, I mean, I just, I just love this, this, this area we live in the, you know, the, geography, the, the headlands, the rivers, the beaches, the towns we’ve got scattered here. It’s just an awesome.

Awesome place. Every time I go away anywhere, I come back and go, how good is this place where you live? Yeah. I’ve somehow stumbled across that, you know, the Coulomb industrial estate. think I had my first shed in there maybe 15, 16 years ago when it was pretty empty and it’s loaded now. That doesn’t surprise me. It’s, you know, an industrial estate that’s five minutes from the beach right next to Coolum. I live in the mountains like just

just behind there and I reckon it’s one of the best places on the coast. So look, to be able to run businesses here, of which some people say, if you’re trying to scale up bigger manufacturing businesses and you get into the thousands of people, is this going to be the place? Well, I don’t know, why wouldn’t it be? mean, most people will come back to the, oh, we can’t get employees here and all of that, but.

I don’t know, I don’t really use that as an excuse. I think we can get employees here, absolutely, and we can figure out all these little problems as we go along. But I’m super passionate about the Sunshine Coast and businesses here. And I guess in the last few years, it’s been good for me as well. I’ve probably got out and spent more time with other businesses. A bunch of my buddies run businesses here on the coast, and I just think it’s a…

a very healthy ecosystem as well. So what’s the future for Zone Manufacturing? Like based on what you just said, it’s staying on the coast, right? But is there, is that a vision to scale to thousand employees or what’s the vision? The vision grows every day that, you know, myself or any of our team come up with new ideas. So the vision is really that.

We want to keep growing businesses. want to build our current businesses. We want to grow new businesses and we want to master the art of building ventures from startup to being a key player in a market very quickly and being known for it. I think with my business hat on, it really is a…

you know, a unique opportunity that I think we’re trying to build for ourselves. These vertical businesses, again, where I was saying, we’re getting our competitive edge from being lighter, stronger, smarter. Every time we look a little bit further sideways, we see opportunity in other industries. So to be able to build businesses in an area that I and a bunch of my buddies that hang out with me every day,

have this competitive edge in our passion for those types of methodologies but can can try and scale up multiple businesses at once. It’s a pretty exciting opportunity for us, I must say. And from a business sense, you know, it’s like putting multipliers on multipliers because it really is just a continuing infinite.

growth and the more we diversify, the stronger our group gets as different markets go up and down. So who knows, we could bugger it all up and not be here in 12 months, but I, but I highly doubt it because we have got a skillful team that we’re building there. And you know, we’re real, we really are diversifying across a couple of different industry sectors now that I would think, you know, through highs and lows of different ones, we can flex and move and

And that is just sort of, you know, adding to the strength and in a business where you might be talking evaluation or multipliers to me, these things are all ticks that if I’m looking at a business, I’m looking for these types of things. So the fact that we are executing that, you know, I think is a, it’s an exciting thing for our team. What would you say to, to another other business people out there or entrepreneurs who are, who are currently kind of.

growing in a silo or are growing in one industry, they’re nailing whatever it is that they’re doing. I think there’s definitely some learnings in what you’re talking about there, but what would you say to those people about the value in looking sideways or diversification?

Look, I think it’s understanding capacities and it’s also understanding the want for growth.

Understanding, well, there’s rights and wrongs, but I think understanding your capacities and the team capacity is definitely something on becoming a lot more conscious of. You know, I guess maybe for the last 10 years, it’s been fun to, you know, be sprinting, but I don’t think it’s, it’s not necessarily, what’s the word? It’s not a long-term game you want to play forever because I think, you know, can burn yourself out, can be dangerous and not great for overall team. So I think.

Look, spreading sideways and looking sideways is about just continually checking capacity and going, we good for it? Should I look sideways? There should be always the percentage of anyone or any business that you are looking sideways, but how much you’re looking sideways and how quick you move sideways should be, you know, the textbook would say based on your capacity and how you can cope with that. Now, I doubt I’ll ever be the person that’ll fully stick to those rules, but being conscious of it, I think is the key thing.

and that, would be my advice, you know, look sideways when you can look sideways when you got a spare minute and what’s going on, what’s out there, who’s out there. because to me again, it’s, it’s a good thing that keeps, keeps the fire alight and, you know, keeps a bit of fire in the belly for, for, for keeping interested, I guess, in business. I like that. Hopefully our listeners and viewers are, you know, through your story, being inspired to kind of take off those blinkers in their business and, and look sideways.

But I love that cautionary angle there as well as, you know, do it with caution and when you’re capacity and when your team and when it’s the right time to push sideways. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So Dave, personally, your vision as well, like, you know, where are you going as a, as an entrepreneur and as an, as a, business owner? Like, do you, do you know what your plans are or are you just keep it on going? No. Yeah. Look, I think, you know, for me,

I sit in a CTO role now and for me, I add value in that technical. I love the thinking around production. But there’s no doubt my skill set, which probably comes back to that capacity and conversation. And maybe this is one of my lucky things. It’s I can align a product, but at the same time, I’m dreaming up a product, whether it’s

a boring market or a fun market. tend to think about fun markets, whether it’s marine, aerospace, adventuring equipment. I just tend to think about those. So when I think about them and if they’re in something we’re going to do, I guess my bit of superpower is that I’m designing the product in the methodology and capacity that I would best see fit. So it is for me, am

somewhat lucky. don’t get involved in some of the boring bits throughout, but I envision from a product all the way through manufacturing and how it goes out the back door and how someone would use that product. So, you know, for me, I need to make sure that I’m continually doing that. I can also be a person that’ll get stuck right down in the nitty gritty of production and be solving a problem in the corner of a shed.

But if I was to try and focus on going, where do I bring value and how can we scale businesses? That would be my bid. I need to stay in that line. Not necessarily stay in that line. Again, my superpower is I go and get stuck on the floor. I see challenges. I was at work at four o’clock this morning helping a paint team that are having big challenges in one of the areas in our factory.

If people upstairs designing either designing businesses, designing products, do not understand the challenges that happen in key pockets of the business. It’s how friction in business happens. And when you can remove as much friction or design a product with as much friction as, as least amount of friction as possible, things can happen quickly, easily. And the end user isn’t the one that pays the price either by something costing more than it should.

or by letting them down because the quality wasn’t there. So again, you know, I hope I never lose touch with just, you know, being the person that’s out there and trying to understand how robots work. We make things, looking at structures, designing better, designing with less amount of building materials, all the key things, but just keeping in touch with really that top to bottom.

And that’s, I’m not a, like I said, the other just before, I’m not 100% detail guy. I’ll fill the blanks pretty quick and leave it to others to fill finer detail. And again, that’s still probably my dream and how I do that, you know, the team I surround around me for, you know, getting through those big chunky, is this a market? How could we go there? Can we look there?

But I guess to add to that, the exciting things that are the conversations that are going on around me is how do we design those funnels where we can put businesses in the top and let AI and different processes and methodology drop out and answer at the bottom and go, nah, you guys are kidding yourself, move on to your next one. Or that’s a winner, we think that’s good, let’s take this to the next step.

You know, there’s some pretty exciting conversations going around our tables at the moment on, you know, how we could make those types of things happen. Yeah. That’s very cool. Just to wrap up here. I’m interested in what you can share with us about the, you know, the things happening at zone manufacturing, like any exciting new things coming around the corner that maybe you can share. Yeah. Look, you mentioned aerospace as well. Yeah. Look, look, cure Marine. It’s got, it’s got the first of these full carbon fiber, 55 foot cats.

We’ve got multiples on order at the moment going to all different parts of the world. The first one’s about to roll out just before Christmas, so that’s super exciting. Those guys have got a brand new big facility getting built in the next 12 months to really scale up production and look at a couple of other sideways industries in the marine market. One Composites has got a brand new big facility coming out of the ground. They need to absolutely scale up composite production.

more of an agile batch production type facility, anywhere where we could be doing projects for defense. And we have been doing stuff for defense through to commercial, a lot of drone products, big drones, you know, little things flying cameras around big stuff flying long distances anywhere in the ag industry to delivery service to, you know, state to state delivery service drones. we got

of those projects on those composite parts of those composite parts and full full projects and to end on those to you know guys you know putting electrical systems in these big drones that you know could leave takeoff here at Caloundra and and be in Sydney you’re doing that all in Coolum yeah amazing yeah so there’s those aerospace projects we’ve got just other aerospace projects in general

component manufacturing. My favourite hobby is planes and building planes and flying planes. So, you know, I’ve got two multiple full aircraft projects on the go at the moment, a two seater that’s just about finished and a six seater. The boats, planes, any trains? Planes, we’ve got trains. We’re building the biggest, we’re building the main big mock up for the Queensland Rail Project at the moment.

We’ve just done all of the front end, all of the interior. It’s about a 65 metre mock-up train that’s getting built at the moment. Yeah, jeez, there’s plenty of exciting projects and Zone RVs. It’s cranking along. It’s just launched a new Summit, so a new $280,000 full carbon fibre caravan.

It’s a rehash or a next generation of something we’ve been successful at doing. So it’s just hit the market literally last week. So it’s exciting. Another full new range of vans coming for zone. Just continuing to work on our strengths and making lighter and stronger there. But yeah, that’s… So much going on. There’s heaps going on. Yeah.

That’s very cool. I think most people on the subject case wouldn’t be aware of the scale and the type of manufacturing that’s happening in the estate behind Coolum. It’s very cool. and look, it’s an exciting place there because there’s a bunch of other businesses that are doing some exciting things there too and are scaling. It’s a good vibe over there behind Coolum. Take a drive through there and have a look if you haven’t. There’s heaps going on. And watch this space, Dave.

Thanks for joining me on the Coast and Commerce podcast. Thanks for having me. And for you guys watching, if you’ve enjoyed today’s show, make sure to hit subscribe on YouTube or follow on the podcast player because this is just getting started with episode or season four of the Coast and Commerce podcast. We’ve got lots of great new guests coming in this season. So make sure to follow along and share this with someone else in business who you think would get value from this episode. See you in the next one.