Plata pump man’s plight vexes M.P.

Press, 15 June 1978, Page 1

Plata pump man’s plight vexes M.P.

PA Wellington The plight of a “brilliant” inventor who is now left with only his war pension because the Government failed to give him assistance to develop a water pump now worth millions of dollars was related in Parliament yesterday. The pensioner, Mr Roy Martin, of Dunedin (left), had been given a U.D.C. award for his invention of the Plata water pump during the administration of the last Labour Government, said the Labour member for Dunedin Central (Mr B. P. MacDonell). When National became the Government, Mr Martin wanted to market his invention, but in spite of repeated attempts to get help from the Government, he had been turned down. “I telephoned him today to see how he was getting along with this project and he told me that the Export-Import Corporation had sold the rights to a British company and the pump would be produced by British workers producing initially 10,000 pumps worth SIOM.” Mr MacDonell said Mr Martin, whom he described

as a quiet, unassuming man with a brilliant mind, but very little formal education, now had to rely on his war pension to work on further developments in his own business in Dunedin. He was working under “terrible” conditions, Mr Mac Donnell said. Mr D. F. Quigley (Nat., Rangiora) said Mr MacDonell had been poorly informed and was telling only half the story. Mr Martin no longer owned the rights to the pump, which he had invented seven years ago, Mr Quigley said. They had been sold to a company named Plata Power, Ltd, which had in turn sold the rights, to develop it in the Northern Hemisphere, to a British consortium. Plata, Ltd, was a New Zealand-owned company based in Dunedin, and Mr Martin was one of its directors. About 100 of the pumps have been made in Dunedin by local firms under licence. Some are now working in New Zealand but many have been shipped overseas. In Dunedin last evening Mr Martin said he had to push his war pension into his research and “scrounge” materials.

He said he was now working on another turbine. When he applied to the Development Finance Corporation for a temporary loan for a new lathe, two highly qualified Government engineers had visited his workshop to view the pump, he said. “After looking at it for a while they suddenly realised they were looking at the wrong end. “I can see thousands of young people being given jobs. If all those people in Britain are going to get work, why shouldn’t New Zealanders get the work.” He said that royalties from the pumps built in Britain would be some time away. “The inventor is always at the end of the queue. The company gets what it is entitled to and we get what is left,” he said. Mr Quigley was not entirely correct when he said that the rights to the pump had been sold to Plata Power, Ltd. The company had bought the licence for the pumps, he said.

“If they do not do the job properly, we can take the licence away from them. We have never sold the patent rights.”