Kōrero: Manufacturing – an overview

Electronics company Rakon, set up in 1967, manufactures the crystal oscillators used in global positioning systems (GPS). In 2009 the company produced 50 million of its temperature-compensated crystal oscillators, making it the world’s fourth largest manufacturer of the crystals. The company’s research programme has seen it reduce the error rate of crystals from 20 parts per million down to 1 part per million. It is supplying a rapidly growing market, as GPS devices are embedded in laptop computers and mobile phones. In the early 2000s Rakon had factories in New Zealand, the UK and France, and joint ventures in India and China. Of its 800 staff, 500 were based in New Zealand.