Timing technology company Tekron International expects a significant boost in revenues following the admission of New Zealand into the WTO Government Procurement Agreement.
The agreement will see New Zealand companies gain guaranteed access to bid for government contracts in the other 43 WTO member countries, including the US, and Tekron is one of the first out of the starting blocks.
According to Tekron CEO, Marc Michel, this will open doors to the US government procurement arena, particularly in the lucrative defence and IT sectors where the company’s high precision GPS and atomic clock time keeping technologies provide critical synchronisation of national power grids, civil networks such as telecoms and enterprise as well as aerospace and defence.
“I would expect that this will allow us to grow our US business by at least 50% in the coming year, reflecting the significant potential we’ve identified in their defence, homeland security and power generation sectors,” he says.
Tekron has recently boosted its engineering and marketing staff, with more to come, and Michel says it will significantly accelerate the company’s plans to grow in the US market.
The company already has contracts with the Tennessee Valley Authority and Bonneville Power Authority, two of the largest federally-owned transmission and distribution companies in the US, and is currently in discussion with new customers in the power and defence sectors.
Michel welcomes the GPA, saying Tekron had struggled to win government business in the US due to the regulatory barriers that the GPA now effectively removes and allows the company to compete on a level playing field for a part of the Federal Administration’s US$ 30bn annual expenditure.
“This does open doors for New Zealand companies, particularly in the products and services space. To be successful, you still need to be able to demonstrate that you have a globally competitive product and the ability to provide the level of service that US customers expect”.
“For Tekron, it means a much faster sales cycle. We can now go through the process to become an approved government supplier, which will make doing business with all parts of the government exponentially faster whilst giving our customers the assurance that we meet all applicable regulatory and competition requirements.
