Navman Scoops Supreme Award For Mega-Deal

Navman Scoops Supreme Award And Recognition For Mega-Deal

Media release

3 November 2002

NAVMAN SCOOPS SUPREME AWARD AND RECOGNITION FOR MEGA-DEAL Navman NZ Ltd has added both the HiTech Supreme Award for Excellence, and Deal of the Year to its growing list of awards for excellence.

Navman collected the awards at the annual Hitech Awards, held in Christchurch on Saturday night. The company was also a finalist in three other categories.

The awards follow on from Navman'srecent naming as Supreme Exporter of the Year by Trade New Zealand, and, according to Navman president, Peter Maire, is recognition of '15 years of hard work to become an overnight success'.

He says Navman's success comes from continuing focus on developing quality products, high value IP and speed to commercialisation.

"Underpinning this is a solid commitment to R&D. We have 55 engineers working to meet the demands of its marine, land navigation, fleet tracking and telecommunication markets."

The award-winning 'deal' was the company's multi-million dollar acquisition of the US-based Conexant GPS business, creating new jobs and export earnings of around $25m per annum.

The deal also opened up new markets for Navman internationally through Conexant's customers, several of whom are global industry leaders, and attracted significant new engineering and manufacturing business to Christchurch, boosting Navman's Christchurch OEM division and an association with Dynamic Controls.

Peter Maire says the deal has made Navman one of the industry's most significant large-volume GPS manufacturers and is building sales in excess of $US1million a month for Navman.

" The acquisition, transformed Navman's start-up OEM business into an estimated $25m million business and created winners on a myriad of fronts," he says .

"For Navman, it gave us a completely new product offering and a global distribution channel up and running in 12 weeks. It also made available entirely new distribution channels and markets for our existing products as well as opening up new custom-build opportunities."

Mr Maire says the turn-key global development and distribution infrastructure established has enabled Navman to gear up for major expansion across its whole business in terms of products it can create, technologies it can capture and access to new markets.

Navman OEM executive vice president Mark Bowman says the deal created a viable business for Navman OEM in Christchurch, immediately fostering eight new engineering jobs. Local manufacturer Dynamic Controls Ltd gained extra staff, extra revenue, access to new knowledge and relationships enabling it to further leverage its own contract manufacturing services.

"Overall, the deal was a win for Christchurch and New Zealand's economy - eight new jobs immediately created at Navman alone and an estimated $25 million additional export revenue per annum," says Mark Bowman. "It has established Navman OEM as a significant employer and generator of R&D, adding to Christchurch's reputation as a leading electronics center."

Peter Maire says the deal was one of a number of elements that have contributed to Navman's explosive growth (from 7 - 250 staff in 12 years), which include key breakthroughs and core IP developed by Navman.

During the last few years the company has focused on a market and product diversification strategy with the addition of three new business units. These units are involved in the development and marketing of GPS based 'in car navigation products', integrated AVL fleet tracking and two way messaging systems and OEM Integrated Solutions. This has been the result of a focussed drive to expand its core expertise in GPS, honed in the marine electronics sector, into other areas.

Navman NZ Ltd has subsidiaries in the USA, UK and Australia and exports almost its entire product, manufactured at its Auckland site.

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About Navman NZ Limited

a.. Navman is a recognised world leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of high reliability GPS products for the marine, personal GPS, fleet management and OEM markets. a.. It is one of New Zealand's fastest growing companies, employing over 250 people globally in Australia, USA, Europe and its home base in New Zealand. b.. The company was recently named New Zealand's Supreme Exporter of 2002. § Visit Navman at www.navman.com

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