Automation is on the rise in New Zealand and at TMX we have seen a significant increase in the number of automation enquiries over the last 12 months.

Our New Zealand General Manager Caleb Nicolson spoke about the automation boom to Newsroom, a leading New Zealand media outlet, about the growing demand for automation solutions. 

As the story outlines a number of sectors – horticulture, manufacturing, IT, finance, construction – are experiencing growth. The demand for goods is booming. However, this leaves “many companies stuck with wanting to produce more to meet demand, but not able to employ more staff to do it”. Automation is increasingly being seen as a potential solution.

It’s an international trend, as the piece states “a ‘Future of Work’ report commissioned by the logistics giant DHL and released in December last year estimated 29 percent of all workplace tasks are done by machines. This is expected to grow to 52 percent by 2025”.

A similar sentiment is evident in New Zealand. A November 2020 survey of executives in 29 countries, including New Zealand, by the business consultancy firm Deloitte found two thirds of business leaders used automation to respond to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, automation requires investment and as the author notes, there are some factors working against investment such as “distance from market, size of market, rewards for innovation being capped by the size of the market, saleability being hard, investment dollars being soaked up in improving environmental performance”.

Despite this, TMX has seen a forty percent increase in the number of automation enquiries over the past 12 months, including clients looking at automating storage and retrieval systems in their warehouse and distribution centers, as a way to minimise the number of tasks done by humans.  

As Caleb states in the piece,  a significant percentage of the cost and time in a manual warehouse is people walking around putting things on, and taking things off shelves. Robots and other automated systems can bring products to people, not the other way around. Automation is increasingly accessible at a lower cost too, “the accessibility of automation means it’s no longer available just to the big guys,” Caleb says. “You can do it for under $10 million.” 

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Automation is one of TMX’s strengths, and in our New Zealand office we draw on the expertise of our colleagues in Australia and across Asia to deliver industry leading automation solutions for our clients. Get in touch if you are in the market for automation solutions.