Receivers keep high tech firm alive

Press, 19 February 1983, Page 19

Receivers keep high tech firm alive

PA Auckland The troubled high technology company, Anae, which was placed in receivership late last year, will keep trading in the short term, and fill some export orders, the receiver, Mr Bryan Kensington, has said.

“The receivers are continuing the business and making up contracts. We do not discount the fact that now we have a reasonably tidy operation," Mr Kensington said.

"We are making progress and are completing most of the export orders, though some are more technically difficult than others."

There was a hope of salvaging parts of the business, and work would continue until June when progress would be reassessed, he said. Staff numbers at the

Mount Albert premises had been cut from 108 to 38. The Bank of New Zealand, which holds the first debenture over the company's asseKensington and another Auckland accountant, Mr David Mace, as receivers.

When the firm was placed in receivership in early December, Mr Kensington was appointed receiver by the Marac Corporation, which jointly held the second debenture with the Development Finance Corporation. Started by a small group of University of Auckland Physicists and other scientists in the mid-19605, Anae carved itself a niche in the highly competitive technology world of ion beam science.

The company opened offices in the United States and Switzerland, and had developed a specialised mar-

ket supplying sophisticated computerised scientific and production monitoring equipment to universities hnd industry in the United States. The isolation of New. Zealand and the world recession in the electronics industry, especially in the relatively closed education-science market, have been partly blamed for the company's failure by some industry sources.

Last year’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research discussion paper on the future of the electronics industry in New Zealand, cited Anae as an example of what New Zealand industry could achieve.

The study listed Anae as a company exporting more than SIM worth of equipment a year.