Lotus cars for U.S.A.

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 4

Lotus cars for U.S.A.

An initial export order from California for 50 Lotus sports cars has been received by the Christchurch firm, Steel Brothers.

This was disclosed by the firm’s chairman of directors, Mr R. D. H. Steel, last evening at a dinner to mark the company’s centenary. Mr Steel said that his company was concentrating a lot of effort in exports. Earnings had gone

from scratch to $300,000 in the year before last; this year export eamings would be more than $600,000; and for the year ending in March, 1979, they were expected to be more than SI.SM, possibly as much as S2M, with Lotus cars accounting for about 50 per cent of the business. The Californian order was received only this week, as was a further firm order from Australia for Lotus cars, both sports and saloon. The rest of the company’s exports are in truck cranes, trailers, and crane components to Australia, the Pacific, and Korea. The Prime Minister, Mr

Muldoon, who alsos poke at the dinner, said he was greatly impressed with the company’s Pacific Island exports which this year are expected to be worth about $270,000. “There is a great future, a great potential there, and New Zealand manufacturers must go right out after it; likewise in the United States,” said Mr Muldoon.

“Let us continue to demonstrate there that New Zealanders can produce quality exports at a price and of a standard that will meet any competition. If industry as a whole

cannot do this and achieve an ever-increasing volume of sales, we are going to be so much longer solving our economic problems,” he said. “One of the great and probably unappreciated contributions Steels has made to New Zealand industry is in the training of first-class tradesmen. It was having this sort of men — and they could not have been so well trained in other than a firm with a

good industrial relations record — that enabled Steels to quickly adjust to new circumstances, to change direction, products, to respond to challenge,” Mr Muldoon said.