Atomix Boats take off

Atomix Boats take off

A young Christchurch entrepreneur is making waves in the marine industry in New Zealand and abroad.

Former taxi-fleet owner Joseph Clapp, 30, has built on his keen interest in boating by launching Atomix Boats, a rapidly expanding powerboat manufacturing and marketing business, with his Chinese business partner William Xu.

His vision was to take the best in New Zealand marine design to the world, at an affordable price. So he engaged one of New Zealand’s foremost marine designers, Brett Bakewell-White, to design a new range of powerboats. He then built a factory in China to keep manufacturing and global distribution costs as low as possible.

In the three years since forming Atomix, Joe and William have invested over US$5m in design and manufacturing and now employ more than 80 staff in Jinhua City, Zhejiang.

“First, we hired a team of ten kiwi boat builders to set the factory up and train the local staff,” says Joe. “We have kept Kiwis involved and are now seeing the results, exporting our boats to more than eight countries, including New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Norway and France”.

“We are the manufacturer, the importer and the seller here in New Zealand, so we don’t need to make huge margins every step of the way,’’ Joseph explains. “We have set up our production base in China to make boats more affordable for New Zealanders, not to increase our profit margins.’’

Having just launched the range on the domestic market, Atomix is now selling through distributors in Europe and Australia. By being based in China it can target the summer boating seasons in both hemispheres. With an ever-expanding worldwide distribution, Atomix aims to increase production to more than 1,000 boats over the next 18 months.

ENDS.

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