McKay Group has done it again! This time it’s McKay’s USA operations that’s cleaning up. Yesterday it was announced that McKay was amongst the finalists for the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM) Innovation and Success Awards. McKay will be competing in the “Exporter of the Year to the USA (NZ$500,001-NZ$5 million)” category. The American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand introduced these Awards in 2000 to celebrate success and innovation in business relationships with the USA. McKay has been exporting to USA since 2008 and principally operates in the marine market, offering services including engineering design, automation, switchboard manufacturing, electrical construction and electrical maintenance. Recently, McKay has been able to offer software solutions to USA clients since the opening of McKay’s newest division – “McKay Software”. However it was McKay’s involvement on MY Cakewalk, the largest superyacht every built in America, that provided the biggest platform. The project encouraged positive word of mouth in the marine market, allowing McKay to secure other USA marine projects such as; SY Hemisphere, 25 work boats by Blount Boats and Spirit of Boston. Among the award judging criteria was “commitment to innovation”, where McKay were able to present two innovative products of their own. The award- winning MIMACS, an integrated alarm and monitoring system, and Sidewinder, cable management software, are two innovations that were designed with the client, for the client. Both products have impressed McKay’s USA customers.
MY Cakewalk where McKay did the full electrical design and build, manufactured the switchboards and implemented MIMACS.
“MIMACS is very user friendly and easy to navigate. I could not only monitor any point on the vessel, but could control most systems from anywhere on the vessel via touchscreen. The scalability was endless. I rarely ran into any issues with the system over the 4yrs I operated it. Their remote support is top notch and any issues I did have were dealt with quickly” said Kevin Rooney, Chief Engineer on MY Cakewalk. Despite the Global Financial Crisis, McKay has been able to achieve exponential growth in the USA market. The establishment of a permanent McKay base in Connecticut, USA was one of the many goals that McKay has managed to fulfil. Lindsay Faithfull, McKay’s Managing Director says that this has been crucial to meeting the needs of USA customers. “It is essential for USA customers to be able to access our products at any given time”, Faithfull said. McKay is excited about what is in the USA pipeline and look forward to working with more and more USA customers.
McKay provided electrical design and engineering support, as well as switchboards, and motor control centres. Photo courtesy of SY- Hemisphere .com
The winners will be announced at a black tie affair on 20th August, 2015.
