Firm saved, ‘Mr I' retires

Press, 2 November 1985, Page 21

Firm saved, ‘Mr I' retires

By

Neil Birss

Allan Dewar, Christchurch’s “Mr International Harvester,” retired on Thursday from the New Zealand enterprise he saved. International Harvester, the long-established manufacturer of trucks, farm machinery, and construction equipment, got into difficulty in the United States in the early 1880 s. Mr Dewar, managing director of International Harvester’s New Zealand subsidiary since 1976, was asked by Chicago headquarters to scout for a buyer for the New Zealand operation. The subsidiary, with 300 employees, was in good financial'shape until the end, but the once-mighty International Harvester, at the beginning of its fatal illness, was divesting itself of its overseas operations.

Mr Dewar had talks with “up to a dozen companies.” AU were North Islandbased, and many would have closed the Christchurch assembly activities, with their many jobs. Early in 1983 an almost unknown company, AIC International, a combination of New Zealand capital under Messrs David Scott and Rod Warn, and Kuwait investment, told Mr Dewar it was interested in IH New Zealand. Complex negotiations followed before the subsidiary was taken over, and eventually renamed AIC. “My main object was to keep IH New Zealand running as an up-and-coming company without a major dismantling of the organisation,” he said yesterday. This Mr Dewar achieved, keeping hundreds of Christchurch people in jobs.

“I retire in a happy mood, knowing the company is in good shape. Its owners are interested in further development, and further supervising the programme and objectives that I have developed under their management” There is some sadness in the retirement of this good company man. The association with International Harvester lived on the day after his retirement in the IH 40-years-service tie-pin he wore. When Allan Dewar was growing up in Ashburton in the 19205, International was already a great brand name in New Zealand — on trucks, pick-ups, and tractors. The Chicago company has been assembling and distributing its products from Christchurch since 1912. He joined it in 1945, after war service.

By 1960 Mr Dewar was secretary of International Harvester New Zealand, and in 1972 he set up the International Harvester Credit Company in New Zealand — which he considers his greatest achievement

He was summoned to the world headquarters in Chicago in 1976, and came back to be managing director, one of the few New Zealanders to head the subsidiary.

IH thrived, and now as AIC continues to thrive, while the American parent firm fell behind through slowness to adapt, and then sank into difficulties after bringing in outside management. On the last of his many trips to Chicago, Mr Dewar found the IH headquarters a fraction of its old size. Most of the International tractors sold in New Zealand have been made for the company overseas for some time, because of the model sizes popular here and the prices we can afford. Within a year, the brand name International Harvester will end. Now owned by Case, the products will appear under this name, or those of firms to which it divests IH divisions.

In spite of Mr Dewar’s attachment to IH products, he led the way into diversification since the ownership

change. To keep Christchurch assembly, for example, he took the firm into assembling Nissan trucks. The labour-intensive assembly will stay in Christchurch, as will some activities such as data processing, after AIC moves its headquarters to Auckland by February. Mr Dewar modestly attributes his success in keeping the firm intact, and keeping the assembly jobs for Christchurch, to the support of:

© His wife. Many business people forget the part in their success that support from home plays, he says.

© The staff who stood solidly with him during the unsettling demise of the parent company. Of the industry he has spent most of his life in, Mr Dewar has some interesting views. “In construction equipment I see little expansion. In trucking, I would see the market declining. In farming, I see no way the industry can return to the days when 5000 to 6000 tractors a year were sold in New Zealand.”