‘Production Line back with new products, processes

Press, 19 May 1981, Page 21

‘Production Line back with new products, processes

A new series of “Production Line,” a programme that looks at ideas, processes, designs and machines which are new/and also, homegrown, begins on One this evening. <-’ Fronted by Helen Paske, a senior feature writer on the “Listener," with two reporters, Kevin Milne and Warwick Burke, “Production Line” covers innovation and initiative in business and industry in New Zealand.

“Because of New Zealand’s small population, local businessmen have to make the most of any opportunities presented to them,” says the producer and director, John O’Leary. “During the series we’ll be looking at the advantages and disadvantages of running a business in this country in 1981.”

There will also be examples of local success stories, and of lines produced by New Zealanders that most people never hear about. “A lot of them are quite ingenious,” says O’Leary.

“Production Line” aims to cover the whole of New Zealand, and this evening’s programme' takes viewers from Nelson, where waste products from a local tip are being used to make a fertiliser, to Dominion Oil which re-refines dirty oil in Auckland.

“The company is not only re-refining oil for local consumption, but it is selling its service abroad, to the. Americans and elsewhere,” says O’Leary.

There is also an item about knitting yarn put out by a. New Zealand knitting yarn maker called Crucci,

and another on the production of a type of glass that is new to New Zealand.

Also included in each programme will be an explanation in layman’s terms of the meanings of such expressions as “export incentives,” “joint ventures,” “mergers and takeovers” and “Designmark.”

“We hear these sort of terms every day in news reports and read about them in the newspapers, but most of us probably don’t really know what they mean,” says O’Leary. “In the first programme we look at export incentives and, with the aid of charts, and a little help from Helen, explain exactly what that expression means.”

Work on this series of “Production Line” began in February and will continue through to mid-July. Helen Paske writes her own scripts from details supplied to her by the programme’s researchers, and has just two days in which to become familiar with them before filming begins. “Kevin Milne is doing all the reporting -r and by the end of the series he should know more about New Zealand manufacturing than anyone else in the country,” says O’Leary with a grin. “It’s quite a difficult job for a reporter to do — not only has he to present the facts, but he also has to include a certain element of personal approach, so that people have : confidence in him as a person and enjoy what is going on. “Kevin has been a television journalist for some years, and Warwick Burke —

who will make a contribution to most programmes — is already well-known to most New Zealand viewers.” O’Leary and his team have used film items only in cases where it would be impossible not to do so. “For instance, you can’t ,show a new design of a wetsuit, or a Russian trawler, or an oil refinery, or a new design of a trailersailer in the studio. But you can cope with breaking glass, new' furniture designs, or demonstrating new concrete laying technique. “Some of it might not be clean, but it can be done.” “Production Line” is not about inventions, but about turning an invention into a manufactured product, according to John O’Leary. “Many manufacturers approach us with-products, but the majority, of our material is the result of painstaking research — telephoning, talking, visiting factories, getting suggestions from members of the public — all done by our researcher Frances Renouf," he says. Prospective products are put through tests to ensure that the manufacturers’ claims can be substantiated, so that all claims made on the programme are valid. “Because of our farming outlook in New Zealand, a lot of our locally manufactured products tend to be overlooked, as is the skill and workmanship involved in making and marketing them. “There are many exciting lines being produced in New' Zealand at the moment, giving us an advantage on overseas markets that many other countries just don’t have.”