The current size of Magritek is not really relevant saysits chief executive.
The manufacturer and marketer of small scale Nuclear Magnetic Resonance products should rather bejudged on the value it provides for its customers says Andrew Coy, based near Victoria University,Wellington.
“While we are not as large as overseas companies, what we’re really about is a much betterservice for our customers, and much better products.”
The same logic is behind the company’s .com web address, and its provision of phone numbers inSan Francisco and London; both of which connect through to its headquarters.
“We don’t make a big deal that we’re from New Zealand, rather that we see ourselves asembedded in the global economy, effectively a few hours to the west of California,” Coy says. Infact, equipment can be shipped to the United States often quicker that it could be from Europe.“We want our customers to feel like we’re next door,” he says.
Magritek’s innovative products grew out of (and continue to be cross-fertilised) by more than20 years of research carried out by Sir Paul Callaghan’s
This technique uses magnetic fields and radio waves, and measures the interaction with anatom’s nucleus, measuring signature frequencies (resonance). By changing the magnetic field, a 3Dimage can be created, with NMR being particularly useful for portraying liquids and soft tissues.
“The thing with traditional NMR instruments is that they are very expensive,” Coy says.“You need to create large magnetic fields using very low temperatures and superconducting magnets,along with a large special room to house it all.” Such machines are often seen in a hospitalenvironment, where they work in conjunction with X-rays and CT scanners.
“The focus of our company is to make NMR products smaller, using new tricks, innovations andelectronics,” he says. “What we provide is NMR and Magnetic Resonance Imaging that you can useoutside a dedicated laboratory.”
Its much smaller scale products are (so far) concentrated onfour areas: industry solutions, research tools, portable instruments and teaching. It has beenoperating as a private company since 2004, is now profitable with a positive cashflow.
“Our aspiration is we want to grow faster, and we want to do it from New Zealand,” Coysays.
One favourable aspect for Magritek is that because the products have a lot of in-builtintellectual property, “what we sell our products for is not based on what it costs us to makethem,” he says. “The value is in the smarts built into the product. We try tocompete where noone else can do what we do.”
The company does have competition however, though not necessarily directly. A teachingenvironment for example, with as always limited capital spend, may be choosing between MRI or anX-ray teaching system. “In that situation, we need to convince our customers that the best spendthey can have is with us,” he says.
Magritek’s intellectual property protection is diverse. There are some patents, plus tradesecrets. Its technology is not easy to reverse engineer, and there is also copyright protection overits software. “We use an appropriate mix of methods to make it hard for others to copy,” Coysays. “On top of that, magnetic resonance is not an easy thing to do, and that we have severaldecades expertise in it.”
The company uses a range of sales channels, and takes advantage of the internet. It also attendsconferences, and uses direct marketing, journals and trade publications as means of publicising itsproducts, and has sales agents in some territories.
“Ours is a complex product, and it’s not a simple sales process,” he says.
Coy himself has a PhD in physics, and studied under Callaghan a number of years ago, beforedeciding that academia wasn’t necessarily where he wanted to be.
“There’s something very exciting about creating and selling products to people who benefitfrom using them, who in turn tell others about it,” he says. “We enjoy that excitement in thecompany.”