Patton Engineering was started in 1952 by George Patton to provide general engineering services in Hawke\u2019s Bay.<\/p>\n
The company was taken over by Patton\u2019s sons Gavin and Mike Patton in 1980 but for the last eight years has been owned and managed by Johno Williams and Andrew Burn, who have grown the Patton Group into a nationwide company.<\/p>\n
Patton Custodial came to fruition when Williams and Burn saw an opportunity in the market while the company was tendering work for the new Christchurch Men\u2019s Prison.<\/p>\n
Williams saw the opportunity to take the baton from Sharp Edge and start delivering end-to-end design manufacture, delivery and installation for custodial projects around the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cPatton Custodial is one of only two New Zealand companies who are qualified to manufacture licensed prison products, but is the only company offering installation too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is bridge the gap for the tier-one contractors to take away that risk from them, whereby we are doing the install after we\u2019ve manufactured the product.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams said currently, Australian firms that offered end-to-end manufacture and installation of custodial products were in New Zealand \u201cin force\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are manufacturing things in Australia and then sending teams here to New Zealand and doing installation [here].\u201d<\/p>\n
The feedback Williams received from contactors was that \u201cit\u2019s going to be so great\u201d dealing with a New Zealand business taking ownership of the end-to-end solutions for New Zealand\u2019s prisons.<\/p>\n
Williams said once the Australian companies had finished their contracts, they were gone and \u201cnever to be seen from again\u201d until the next job pops up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhereas with us, we\u2019re here to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patton Custodial general manager Greg Kidd said while the business was Kiwi-owned and plugging a gap in the market, it also had a \u201cgrowth mindset\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther businesses are really struggling and shrinking and trying to reduce costs just to survive,\u201d Kidd said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going in the other direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the Patton Group covering the area from Gisborne to Christchurch with around 300 staff, Williams said it was now the country\u2019s largest diversified engineering company.<\/p>\n
He said with the bones of Patton Custodial in place, it now just needed to employ its workforce.<\/p>\n
Williams expected to start with 15 to 20 staff, but with big custodial projects underway around the country, he said he could see the business outgrowing its current Whakat\u016b factory \u201cquickly\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patton Engineering was started in 1952 by George Patton to provide general engineering services in Hawke\u2019s Bay. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[67155,1561,3269,25840,109727,2841,3588,1138,23540,1976,1428,13631,117,111,139,69,90,3111,174360,2170,8442,213,1120,61,102,80],"class_list":["post-323138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aussies","tag-bay","tag-build","tag-cells","tag-colony","tag-country","tag-cut","tag-firm","tag-founded","tag-hawkes","tag-manufacturing","tag-never","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-out","tag-penal","tag-plan","tag-prison","tag-sports","tag-takes","tag-to","tag-with","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}