Jet Boats Hydraulic Gear

Press, Issue 31095, 25 June 1966, Page 21

Jet Boats Hydraulic Gear

especially written for "The Press’’ by DON GRADY) *pHE Christchurchbased firm of C. W. F. Hamilton and Company Ltd., is probably the largest manufacturer of industrial equipment in New Zealand. The firm, was founded by a Canterbury sheepfarmer, Charles William Feilden Hamilton, about 27 years ago and today more than .350 workers are employed, most, of them at the company's 21acr e plant site at Middleton.' Though Hamilton's are probably better known for pioneering the jet-boat field, they are also the largest manufacturers of hydraulicl equipment in New Zealand. I The welding capacity of the Middleton plant workshop is one of New Zealand’s greatest. Today, Hamilton's manufac-i ture and fabricate tractor loaders, bulldozers, hydraulic excavators, cranes, control valves, hydraulic presses,' hydraulic cylinders, marine jet propulsion systems and! marine engine conversions, | highway bridges, hydroelectric gates and structures, lamp columns, mine-cars andj railway waggons, heating! equipment, sectional steel boil-I ers, oil circulating industrial!

heating plants and heating exchangers. Mr Hamilton was 21, when he took over Irishman's Creek station in the Mackenzie Country. He constructed a water race and a five-acre storage dam to feed a power scheme on the run. This job for his home, turned out to be a changing point in his career. He designed and built his own machines. A workshop was set up at Irishman’s Creek in which to manufacture and maintain earthmoving machinery. Much of the plant was used for making munitions during the war. At the end of the war, at Irishman’s Creek, he produced bulldozers, angledozers, leaders and graders. Soon his Irishman's Creek plant and its subsidiary at Fairlie became inadequate. When more expansion was called for, the Hamilton company moved to Bath street, Christchurch. Further expansion was inevitable and the company moved its main manufacturing activities and head office to Middleton. Each year, at Middleton a machine-tool budget is prepared and later revised according to the type of work in hand or the contracts that may be pending. One of the latest machines