welcome to the garage network podcast join us and the occasional special guest as we discuss everything automotive from fixing cars as a technician owning an automotive workshop or business overall work-life balance and even the occasional laugh in this episode of tgn talks we were lucky enough to be joined by stu stanners stew is the general manager of century batteries and has been involved in the automotive industry for most of his career we'll learn a little bit about his career path also talk a little bit about business evolution and then even get into better technologies where we are and where that technology is currently going so we hope that you guys enjoy it should we probably start by intentionally introducing yourself yeah so stu would you like to introduce yourself or would mike like to do it for you well it's up to you mike i can't know i can hear what we've got we're today our great guest is stuart sanders from the general manager of century batteries for australia and new zealand welcome thank you mate it's nice to be here thanks for inviting me all right thank you for joining us thanks for joining us yeah it's great i think a lot of the um the guys watching this probably know your brand quite well you've been around for quite a while but potentially don't know yourself you know the gm of century i mean you've been there for quite a while so sort of um we'd like to know a little bit more about you um probably how long have you been with century has it been a while yeah uh coming up 19 years uh with century um last eight and a half years gm of australia and automotive and gym of new zealand prior to that my background is all automotive for 43 plus years god i'm sounding old 43 plus years i've been involved only in the automotive industry and predominantly in sales and marketing area i i'm a kiwi born breed in new zealand worked for fran filters in new zealand doing sales and marketing i went to australia to help introduce fram uh in melbourne five and a half years i stayed there and i had a little stint with a company called london trading because i'm into motorcycles and did sales and marketing for for them in the wholesale area i came back to new zealand in 91 i was invited to buy shares into a company called apco auto parts uh which was a trade orientated auto parts business and we sold that in 1998 to ripco and funnily enough we bought it off ripco for 500 000 and we we sold it back to them for 8 million so good return it's a good return what a great return yeah yeah but you know it was a really great experience that because you know like any big corporate like a ripco who do a bloody good job i mean i'm not speaking ill of them at all but you know they tend to be so big there's a lot of a lot of business falls through the cracks and we were picking up that business so you know today for anybody who's thinking about it there's always those opportunities always um i was gm of the 101 franchise in new zealand for a while and then i came to century century batteries and the rest is history yeah wow a lot of involvement so you've said you've started you stayed with the um the automotive theme seems like throughout your time yeah and you know um probably like like yourselves and a lot of your members um i didn't know what i wanted to do when i leave school and i'm not university trained or anything like that and but i've always had this passion about motor vehicles and motor racing in particular i'm a drag race nut still hold the new zealand a altered drag race record at 7.2 at 181 mile an hour which is not good um and and it was i just you know how you meet so many good people in this industry it's just full of great people and and that's why i haven't left it i've just enjoyed every moment of it yeah i think it is the people that keeps a lot of a lot of us into it you're probably right a lot of us sort of come out of high school and um think i would do this for a bit but i think it's the people that keep us in it indeed so you started when you were three oh you think oh you're welcome yeah that's great that's really good yeah that'd be 50 bucks mate yeah obviously um being in new zealand you're probably not too impacted by a covert i mean as much as the rest of the world but have you noticed any sort of um impact for for sales for batteries i know a lot of companies have noticed sort of some decrease in sales or some increase even what have you guys noticed it's been massive actually um and all i can say is uh thank goodness for zoom um yeah i'm currently the leader in our organization um having um spending thousands of hours basically with my staff and other businesses on the zoom and it's been a savior the biggest meeting i've had on zuma is 72 people believe it or not and uh yeah everything it's an amazing tool but you know impact on us has been uh has been incredible um it's the change absolutely changed the way we do business uh in new zealand and australia our call centers are now based at home and they work from home we introduce technology to allow them to do that i work three days at home in my office at home in two days in the office when there's no lockdown new zealand's in lockdown at the moment i've been running uh or doing my job not running for staffing but i've been doing my work representing uh australia automotive division from auckland out of my office in auckland it's been amazing because of zoom and other things it's worked really really well we've had no face-to-face conferences all the conferences have been canceled the last couple of years we've had very little travel in the lockdown periods so in terms of business it's been dramatic um there's never been a time in anybody anybody's business that they can reflect on how do i run a business in these situations and we've all had to think on our feet and it's taught us a lot about uh what we you know maybe didn't need to do you know you get into those habits you need to drive for an hour or meeting have a half hour meeting your drive now back to the office and things like that those those days are gone um we've incurred massive costs uh freight costs of the killer we're talking millions uh between australia and new zealand uh literally millions um we we haven't um we sort of offset that little a little bit by the lack of travel but nothing comes even close to what the freight costs have come but we've felt as a company and i can tell you this is not a sales pitch it's a fact is that we made the decision two big decisions when we first went into lockdown in australia and new zealand was we must retain all of our staff under any circumstance and because our staff are our most important asset to our business you know and and the second thing is that we must not pass on any costs until we can get in a situation where we're comfortable the industry can and our customers can actually um afford to accept it and uh and and that's just you know it's worked well and as you probably know we have just put a small price increase into the market but that's life and we have we can no longer accept all those massive costs but one of the one of the really big things is the what we call the omni channel um those that aren't familiar with the omni channel it's facebook it's social media it's the website and everything else consumers and your customers have now learned to purchase and operate in a totally different manner they've been sitting at home on their computers and they've they've gone and they've searched the internet for different things and even down to the point where they might just want to say hey mike is your business open i need to go online if they weren't comfortable with the phone etc so the big retailers like uh super cheap and ripco and and uh you know all those consumer retail automotive parts stores have seen in excess of a 30 percent increase in online purchasing now that can't be ignored uh that's massively [ __ ] millions and millions we've noticed we've noticed there's a there's it's during cover there's been a massive shift in this lockdown to people spending their people's behavior there's behavioral changes yes they're going to come out of this which are they don't want to leave the suburb they'd rather so this is really good for workshops like us in suburbs that there's massive spends that massive amounts of money leave your suburb and go to dealers or they go back to the you know to different places to get service services and we don't have in our local suburbs we don't have many dealers so a lot of those cut those cars are leaving to go back to those so so they're like no i don't want to leave our local suburb it's a it's a big shift and it's a great it's a um like you like what you're saying it's a it's a habit it's a habitual change for them so now i'm not gonna go two suburbs away to go get my mercedes service to mercedes i'm gonna take it to a local garage where we've we've really been pushing marketing ourselves as the dealership alternative and those sorts of things too we're really trying to to hammer that and and to find that i did have a couple of questions for you guys too in new zealand you guys have a different sort of lockdown to we've had so automotive has been really shut down unless you had um contacts with what contracts with uh yeah essential service so like workshops like me would i might have a couple of nurses and doctors cars that i work on but i don't have any social contracts at all well essential service is the consumer's vehicle as well because they need that to get to any medical issues or food or anything else so we don't sell you know australia or new zealand to direct to the consumer so we support those businesses that like yours that would be able to service those people but in saying that you know even super cheap for example they shuttle these doors in new zealand at level four uh and they've done a similar thing in australia so uh uh the thing is with with with with our industry with batteries so long as uh everybody's shutting down or doing the same thing when you open up they're all in the same boat together so you're going to get your slice of the buy and sales when you open up again but um what we found uh in lockdowns is that people were parking their cars in their garage and sometimes with their keys in the ignition of course we all know what that does yeah people ticked away thinking it's going to jump in the car in a minute and it flattens the battery and uh we've had we've had a lot of that um probably more so than australia i think i said that to you the other day lockdown sells batteries in the last since my batch if i i mean i i've got to i haven't looked again we we were i think i was selling you costa it's been one a day literally almost one or two a day yeah i mean it's been really the numbers are just astronomical like in australia over the last 18 months we've seen a 15 to 25 increase in wow uh workshop battery sales wow and uh further to that uh with the repcos who we work closely with because we supply them of course um uh there's been some really encouraging stats that have come out from them um even to the extent that in metropolitan areas in sydney and and in melbourne they've had workshops that have had up to two months worth of work booked up um according to them i mean i'm only passing on the information that i hear which is really good for the industry i think so yeah there's negatives and there's positive isn't it some pretty impressive i was going to say some businesses thrive before like with last year we were we had one of the best years we've ever had it's but back in my 30 years i've been in the trade it was back to light being in the 1990s when you know people didn't fly to bali they got in a car and drove to the gold coast or they drove you know it was it was was people didn't have as much money i would start there were different economic circumstances around that but everyone went on a road trip so the lead up to christmas and the lead up to easter were our two busiest times of the year couldn't you could just see it with it all with flat out and then it tapered off after that and you enjoyed you know and you knew that work was coming back but over time over the 30 years that it just sort of peeled out to general work across the whole year you know so well the thing is that what our statistics and surveying shows is that because of staycations people are buying motorbikes they're buying boats you know the if you ordered a boat like a you know whatever boat today you're probably going to wait six to 12 months before you can actually get it uh caravans and everything else so people's spending a lot of money uh touring australia but the thing is the point is that yes we've sold more deep cycle more motorcycle more marine batteries than we've ever sold in the period but those vehicles and bikes and boats are still there so they will require batteries going forward and i think it'll be a while before the world opens up so i think we've all raised up a level in that sphere where we're going to see continual business for at least the next couple of years it's not going to fall over if you know what i mean and do you reckon when we when we do open up because you're talking about you've implemented a lot of new things in your business for like communication and all this sort of stuff uh are you guys planning to keep some of those changes or you think you refer back to how it was absolutely key and we'll still have the work from home situation going we found productivity in a lot of areas has increased things like e-commerce we've we've now uh purchased an e-commerce system which we're trialing before christmas and we'll be releasing in the first part of 2022 um you know and for a wholesaler that's quite a big deal um so um yeah and there's heaps there's heaps of a multitude of different things we've done um uh the the thing is that um the industry and the cons and the consumer right what in in trade and wholesale there was always a thing called when you purchase it was just in time just as you're running out of a stock of something a new your new order of stock would come in and replenish it well now the world has changed to a thing called just in case and because of the freight issues and everything else and the consumer demand that says well just in case there's a you know when we come out of lockdown we're going to see a massive increase i'm going to put more stock in and that's changed the way people purchase even you know from particularly from a business perspective so does that mean you ramped up production up at carroll park you're just like so many batteries mate yeah yeah yeah he's never never made so many batteries yeah yeah i mean that then sort of leads me to the next thing so obviously it seems like sales are up so have you guys had any sort of supply chain issues because i know a lot of the guys on the network do complain about in general automotive parts you know having supply chain issues and i think a last year at some point there's almost some some suppliers weren't even stocking about manufacturers batteries and stuff as well after that and off the back of that i was going to there's heaps of people asking us about who makes batteries in australia and i was like well yeah you know that's a common question actually yeah you're right and last year it was insane it was you know i can't get batteries my supplier can't supply stock where do i get century batteries and it's like well you've got to ring them up and get an account yeah we've embarked on an australian-made program because it's quite scary how many people don't realize we make batteries in brisbane but uh oh absolutely we've had we've had massive issues but all i can say is thank goodness for the factory the factory we invested seven million dollars a couple years ago 18 months ago in a new plate making machine to speed up uh uh you know the manufacturer batteries and it's paid dividends we didn't know then that covered was going to be you know create the mess that it has but um yeah we we we've actually overstocked ourselves as well we were we were the same as everybody else what essentially what happened was uh and it wasn't just with batteries anybody that makes anything makes uh things and we'll talk about us right we can make 1.2 million batteries in our factory we import another 1.2 to 1.4 batteries a year but we make 1.2 million and we we want to make all of that because if we make 1 million and not the other 200 000 you're actually not running as efficient as you can so it's costing you money every factory in the world is running to the same and particularly batteries is running to the same situation so factories were already running to capacity what happened is when everybody shut down the demand for batteries increased they couldn't make any more batteries and then to add insult to injury the uh the freighting companies uh couldn't keep up with the demand of of supplying goods and of course there was up to seven or two months uh a weight to get your product so everybody was in that situation but the our factories really got us out of the that that dive situation to the extent now we're actually well over stocked so here we'll have some issues with some imported batteries but not not many we're in a very good situation can i just get that right so for those that don't know carroll park up in brisbane is where they manufacture all their it's the it's an enormous factory one day when we get auto care i had plans with the lot brisbane auto care double a double a show to come down and do a tour of the factory i think i'd organized that with with uh with one of with sean o'brien and we were going to do a garage sale we're going to walk around with the camera just to show the guys what it was like um but most of your there's not much everything is supplied from australia that there's not much to import build a battery is there uh well well the thing is that you we don't make all batteries and you've got you know efb and and all sorts of other type of battery technology that we have to bring in as well we make the batteries we make predominantly you know more than half the batteries that we sell but what you find in a consumer situation for example like your business uh almost all of the batteries will be made in our factory in brisbane yes all these ones are the yellow yellow and blue yeah yes yeah yes i'm black yes because obviously you guys i supply other industry as well right it's not just automotive well we've got three divisions we've got uh motive power which is the fork truck uh division and we've got standby which uh or power systems as they're called now we do backup systems for telstra and the mines and and you know airports and things like that so yeah we we we've got to import uh all of those batteries actually yeah yeah makes sense one day one day we'll get a tour of carroll park yeah you'll like it mate it's worth the trip i must say it's worth a visit now now what do you think this uh you're talking about some new technologies where do you think it's heading because obviously now we know that we've had our recent run of of um battery management training not too long ago um and even someone who i believe stays abreast of a lot of new sort of technologies i'll be blown away by how much it is changing smart charging all these different stuff that's going on with these cars now where are you seeing that battery that translating into battery technology well i think we can we can put the members we can we can put it you know make them comfortable in the fact that for the next five to ten years lead acid batteries will be number one the predominant battery by far uh 2030 the european manufacturers association said that at 20 30 they'll no longer make lead acid batteries um that'll be lithium or some other technology that they've they've found by then it was actually going to be sooner it was going to be 2025 but the development of what we call sli starting lighting ignition batteries uh hasn't developed quick enough for them to be able to economically uh introduce them or make a legislation that that's all you can fit um in terms of sizes that the d23 size which is your common 55d 23l sort of thing will be the most prominent battery but within that you'll find bins din is now going to be the din battery is going to be without doubt the biggest selling battery even japan now have gone to the din batteries and efb enhanced flooded batteries are increasing massively interestingly enough agm was going to be the world's savior a lot of batteries but it's actually step it's it's not quite where they thought it was going to be um the reason being cost because with the hybrid batteries the auxiliary battery and and other areas they want to make the vehicle as cheap as possible because the cold hard facts are lithium costs a lot of money and even in a hybrid over a true ev battery the cost is massive but we we're seeing massive declines in my genius 40 batteries and and the very smaller batteries are on their way out but our stop starts going to be um it's going to you know grow it's going to hit a point after about three to four years and tip over and you're going to see hybrid vehicles uh take over and you'll see auxiliary batteries even in evs will be lead acid battery for quite some time to come uh they're reasonably small you know 60 stock yeah auxiliary battery um uh yeah but but they're not flash they're not super sophisticated like some of our efb batteries now uh our own ones i mean but we we supply original equipment in japan a lot and you know they'll have uh lithium ion in them already and carbon and things like that now lithium ion and lead acid battery the whole idea is that of that is it speeds up the charging process and you mentioned the the charging systems and they're so sophisticated today that um you've got to actually put light for like battery back in the vehicle that'll burn out you've also got to make sure that uh they're close to will meet original equipment so you'll always find with us that we'll sell like an efb for a stops auto stop start type configuration will be uh two choices it'll be an oem which is the original one for the vehicle or it'll be a cheaper aftermarket i'd say well q85 and the q85 mf yes that's exactly right here yeah okay yeah yeah the q85 has 40 months warranty that's the original equipment battery and it's about a hundred dollars dearer than an mf i think that's just off the top of my head but yeah that's right and that's what it come out with that is the original battery and and it's sort of like you've got to get your head around where the industry's going um you will find as we go down the road that you will have to supply more and more oem batteries i don't know if you realize this but volkswagen for example are now producing vehicles that you have to put a pin into the vehicle to change the battery where it goes into limp mode and the only way you can get that pin number is to get it from the original volkswagen from you know oem uh and it's the airway what they're trying to do is corral vehicles from you know birth to you know to cradle the grave to try and corner those sales because they lose them after about four or five years so so just in saying that so that's like the qr code that might be on the top of the battery okay so can you guys they might like a lot i've noticed that on a lot of varta batteries a lot of other like ones we're pulling out like a oe vasa style batteries they'll have a qr code the vw and the qr code i'm assuming at some point when that's gone in you scan the qr code no no this is worse than that this is uh this is um from an aftermarket perspective what they're saying is well uh we won't give you that code unless you pay for it well does that mean you guys have got to pay for that you've got to pay for that give that to us is that how it's uh well the person that's fitting it has got to do that so what that cost will be i don't know but you know even with this you know what what the double a double a have done with like sharing of data and stuff like that there's going to be a cost that comes with that but we supply uh a european company that that does already and we actually sell the via batteries we sell their batteries um it's not like our batteries putting into their vehicles we hold and and sell their batteries for them and uh we they got lithium ion and all sorts of stuff we saw one the other day wholesale was two and a half thousand dollars wow right and the consumer ended up paying three and a half thousand dollars because he actually wrecked it it was a very late model vehicle he'd done something to wreck it but my point here is that that battery when it goes into the vehicle has a little uh not a qr code but a little chip on it and it actually when you put the cover over it talks to the chip and it tells the car that it's actually got the correct battery in it if you put it out so they're pretty like that like the headlight like the because we've done uh some j2534 programming courses and stuff like that where you've gotta everything's gonna have to be coded to the car yeah a lot of stuff and we and we're we're fully aware of that we realize you have to pay for it yeah it's getting everything all this is gonna it's not i mean it's a cost to us that gets passed on to the consumer it has to be passed on yeah custody it can't it can't be absorbed by the businesses there's no way it can be done yeah the thing is that japan aren't doing that it's just european vehicles at the stage so long may that continue yeah right that's interesting but you know just a little further i think everybody's talking about lithium and you know we've got four lithium-ion factories and not one of them makes the same technology as the other it costs a billion us to set up and and all of ours bar one three of them actually manufacture for oem as drive batteries we've got one factory in turkey which um supplies the uh the smaller batteries so when you say drive batteries for like electric vehicles and uk uv vehicles and in hybrid hybrids but all the technology they haven't settled on a technology yet which is um which is you know that's it it's going to be ongoing developing until they find something which is really quite unique and out there but all i would say in particular to the members be damned careful about lithium ion we will have a deep cycle lithium ion battery coming in early next year two of them actually um and uh this will have bluetooth and it you know and all that sort of stuff but there's so many uh lithium-ion batteries out there at the moment that people are putting in motorcycles and and other things that just don't they just they haven't done their research on the quality of the battery and we're going to go through this we had one at our battery wheel store blow up and and you can't put them out once they once they go up and and it's it's uh we're in a situation where it's a an ignorant point of time for example we get asked today by oem's mitsubishi toyota hyundai they've all asked us if we'll stock the ev drive batteries for them and we said no we can't because what it would mean we would have to have every single battery would have to be sealed off in case of caught fire wouldn't catch the others on fire and we'd have to build a brand new distribution center to stop them that's right yeah if you and your building and your workshops have got lift your mind even starting or motorcycle or uh deep cycle batteries if if the place burns to the ground you've got to be very careful and tell the insurance company that you've actually got it in stock because um they could retract their your insurance as a consequence so so you know i'm assuming that's amazing it makes sense it makes sense but yeah you didn't think about the human who'd want to store that i don't want to stall but inside in saying that that's probably why they're trying to palm it off onto you guys well they've told us that yeah yeah they don't know enough about the batteries you know like uh when you've got a situation with a fire with a small battery and you take the oxygen out all you do is stop the fire for a second as soon as you stop putting the fire extinguisher on it goes up again so keep going until you put it in a bucket of water until it's finished doing what it's doing so yeah so you're cool yeah but it's a chemical reaction with olivia i think we spoke about this years ago when we were driving up to fishing competition it was it's a chemical reaction it was the same reason that qantas said don't put your phone if you lose your phone don't move your seat yeah yeah it makes sense you're absolutely paranoid about having a fire on a plane because the if you move your iphone or your samsung it gets jammed in the seat and you and you bend it or break it the wrong way it starts that chemical reaction and if you have that chemical reaction in an aluminium plane you know 10 000 meters or 30 000 feet in the air you know what big problem it it'll melt everything on its way out of the bottom of the plane so yeah yeah um but yeah i i it's uh in saying all of that uh i i'm really interested to hear that you guys so you guys are manufacturing those batteries in in all ways well not century but that we will be sentry product but they're not our manufacturer at the stage yeah right that's really interesting well you're there you're at the forefront of the technology so you're the one to ask about it it's accessible and we'll only bring them in you know the ones we're bringing in we've been testing for probably a year you know so uh they've got all they've got all the safety requirements yeah because i've been seeing a lot of four-wheel drives come in that they've put lithium batteries in the back for aftermarket accessories and those sorts of things powering those up but i certainly wouldn't be i've noticed that some of the some of the companies that are out there have been pulling back on they had the companies that manufactured dual battery charging kits have been selling out their lithium dual battery charging kits very very cheap why they're a discontinued model i'm not going to mention names of no no that's not but but they have they discontinued their their lithium range to basically go back to i mean my recommendation if i'm fitting any dual battery kit on fitting a century like a agm deep cycle atm is a far better option because we know that i know i know you're going to get three days out of that that'll run your fridge for three days or two days whatever whatever we've calculated it out at um i haven't been a fan of fitting new technologies like lithium batteries especially as starting batteries how do they control the heat going back into them from the alternator yeah run away and that's the thing that the vehicle was never designed to have it in the motorcycle it was never designed to happen and you've got to have you know for these batteries we bring in for example uh we've got charges associated with them and testers because yeah you you don't you know it's things like this that people don't understand you don't want to store or stock a lithium battery at a hundred percent charge you need to stock at about 70 percent or lower and then it gets charged as it goes into the v you know just before it goes into the vehicle because they're too dangerous to sit on the shelf fully charged you've got a bomb waiting to go off and this you've got a really intelligent uh you know sit up on the top of the battery with a bit you know monitoring this battery monitoring system yeah right so what so that's the sub would be no different if it was 100 charge in the car would it um well it's it's you've got it's a totally different regime because you've got you've got drawer yeah yeah and the other thing would be is that um you you you never want to put a lithium ion underneath the bonnet of the car um it sounds stupid but if you could sell sli uh lithium ion battery until the technology gets sorted out even the ones we make in turkey like for bmw et cetera that okay they might not sound weird but they're under a cedric in the boot but you're never under the under the bonnet because it gets too hot get thermally right away make sense big trouble now it makes sense when they put in their spots never really knew i just thought they're trying to make it hard for us well no because they're going back to our bosh we did we ran bosch uh hybrid training here for garage network members but going back to our bus stop that's what is the fan that's why there's yeah it's all about temperature control yeah the filter that blocks up in the in the orients at the back and see there's a little fan that cools the battery down and there's a little uh there's a little filtered paper filter in front of it and it's basically where your heel is if you're sitting in the back of the rory and there's a little on the driver's side there's a there's a little event there that that sets on extensive code and that's what it's there for so yeah that's cool that's super interesting maybe i'll learn something today that's cool yeah well i'm learning something every day there we go do you want to tell the guys a bit about a aec should be a bit of a chat about that is that uh sure um it's something we started uh it's called auto electrical club it's for the ordo sparkies or auto electrical mechanical businesses we have a very successful equivalent in new zealand and we thought we'd introduce something similar to australia now the reason we we do this is no membership fee or anything like that but there's standards you've got to be an artist spoken about but the whole idea behind it was that um that we we got very disappointed with the training that that was given about our batteries and all of the training institutions they were just so out of date uh we now supply the training to to almost all of the universities and training institutions and if we don't we are invited to oversee it it was just so out of date it wasn't fair to the apprentices and and there was so much ignorance and it was that was what got us into it but the other thing was that we found that they the auto electrical industry doesn't have a voice and it gets consumed behind all sorts of other things and it's becoming more and more prominent in diagnosis and things like that it's an industry that covers marine agricultural mining all sorts of different areas and there was no voice in the marketplace for them so we thought that from a networking possibility or networking you know the benefits of that which you'd know all about i mean it's so so damn important um the training aspect and you know uh to get an apprentice to get to get started today in your industry in the auto electrical industry is so hard and with the covert and everything else you can't bring in south african you know employees at the moment and things like that and 40 of all of the uh apprentices fall out drop out before the end of their time and probably one of the biggest things is the fact there's no marketing of of um what you know this business like the mechanical business can can actually bring to a young person you've actually got you've got two people you've got to convince you've got to convince the parents and and the person you've got to get them out of school get them early and we need to tell them the benefits of this industry and what it can offer them um absolutely agree so that that's that we introduced it yeah you know the aec thing was fantastic it's a no-brainer for me i knew about club usa in this club u.s or isn't it is it yeah yeah the the new zealand version is club u.s and i knew about that um from my travels over there fishing with you and meeting all those guys um but um yeah no it was a no-brainer for me as soon as i got an opportunity i was like no i mean this i got to be it was unfortunately we haven't been able to have our conference they have an annual conference we've had to keep delaying and putting off which is which was you know yeah we just put up this year's one off till uh next year's it's a damn shame because you know you know what it's like when you get like-minded people together the power is amazing amusing yeah you learned much from it yeah and you did yeah it's it's and it's it's different like you just realize there's so many differences in different parts of the country and different there's i know there now there's major differences between australia and new zealand and some of the conversations that i've had with some of your um club you asked the guys that have taught me stuff and we've had and i've you know i've still got relationships with them on facebook and saw it was flooding over there the other day let's see so you guys got some rain um but uh yeah no it's been really really good it's really it's great it's good networking it's good to be able to communicate with people and understand what's what the differences are different super important i think you know the whole networking side is super important going forward you know another thing i think is that uh you've got to give a forum to get the voice out there you've got to you know they've got to contribute to it uh and and through our you know uh club yuasa experience in new zealand um you know you get an understanding of the feel of the market and what what it's lacking and then you have a mandate and you can recognize those things that are the most important for the industry and to try and lobby whether it be government or whatever it might be to um assist in getting those things fixed uh and you know it's it's very important otherwise you're just floating around hoping somebody else does something yeah hopefully someone else mixes on my problems for me exactly but i honestly i think that's been the motor industry's attitude in australia for a year fine someone else is going to come along and fix that problem for yeah you know that's yeah well it's not my problem it's not really my problem and collectively we have such a strong voice we are such a and i guess that came out a lot of that was was we could see out of um getting our right to repair legislation which hopefully will have a knock-on effect to some of your guys in new zealand um i don't know you know like obviously we've got this great legislation now that's going to we're going to get access to a lot of information yes it's going to cost us money but it's it's going to mean that it's future proofing my my business and i can tell you it future proves my business to be able to fit those sorts of batteries and access that code like we're talking earlier yeah prior to this it would have locked me out of selling them a battery i totally agree and it would have done right so yeah so so that that was you know credit to everyone that worked on that i mean i the the leading force that we hear about here in australia was the double a double a charging then they led the charge and arca led the charge to get that through and that was it was it's been a massive battle it's been a long battle we were 10 years not saying yeah about 10 years we were we were in spain how long ago were yeah what was that how many years ago yeah we were at a capricorn drinks night hang on and it was the government announced that they were going to back it and that and we all went we were at a capricorn thing we dropped the bar dry in spade and it was um and it was it couldn't have been that long ago you guys just turned 18 not 10 years ago oh yeah i'm long ago yeah thanks costa you're the only that's another one away yeah yeah yeah i used both that time so it's 50 each yeah yeah no but that was years ago i think it was yeah four or five years ago maybe at least that yeah before you and it was and i remember going wow it's gonna happen fizzle but no we are there we're there now and it's happening these buggers have got these manufacturers have got literally until the until the first of july next year to pull their finger out so there's some big changes coming and they'd be pretty quick they don't have long to go they've got eight months to go so yeah it's um but yeah again like i said it's future-proofed my it makes me feel better about it means that we've got and well means that i've got a business that's that's sustainable into the future yeah so we're going to have to make some changes hybrid and ev and they're inevitable or whether it's hybrid ev um or hydrogen or whatever is coming we've just got to adapt and we're pretty good at that covert showed us all we're very good at adapting in this industry totally and i think we've got quite a few years to go before evs will have a large impact unless there's massive government uh legislation changes but uh you know um we if you look around those that supply your industry with brake pads and all the rest of the gear and filters and stuff um they're telling us that uh they're not even spending any money on evs or even thinking about it for the moment it's in the seven year plan uh and so that's what they are thinking which gives me confidence too that we've got enough uh you know ice engines on the road that'll there that we won't even be a concern till then but there will come a time there's no doubt about that yeah well there's going to be a bit of a transition at some point i mean i i've i've been toying with well you know tell our listeners and everyone i've been toying with some ideas about um because we we are carbon neutral we've got awards for being being sustainability awards from our local council and some of the things that i've been toying with is putting in some charging stations to give putting in a charging station in our car park free for our off our solar and we'll put some tesla power walls in to power that give them free charging to give them the confidence and the ability that we are we are we all all of my staff are ev trained so i want to try to we need to as they start to buy one because most australians are two car families i can sort of see this it's going to be one car is going to be the four wheel drive for a little while it's probably going to go and one one maybe the next one may be electric and then they're going to uh we'll buy the the hybrid four-wheel drive so we can go on holidays and go to the snow or go to or get the range and the second car that we're gonna have to drop the kids and to drive into the city is gonna be the ev so to try to capture that and to give that uh really for us to be we i can sit there and sell my customers till i'm blue in the face that i'm ev trained just to try to give them that confidence to turn our car park into free ev charging for the customer so they can bring it here and we can work on it and it can get charged well after we've worked on it of course um or whatever we've whatever we're gonna do i mean obviously it's evs for us is brakes tires and probably not even brakes really it's tires tires wipers cabin filters that's the coolant flush every now and then oh cool and flush yeah coolant flushes and and uh and maybe air conditioning well believe it or not uh in new zealand we're working with an oem company original equipment manufacturer uh about a truck small truck to go around and recharge electric trucks without naming a brand and everything else uh because they've found that they they can only do 120 k's and a deep inside truck and that's getting poked up on the side of the road it's in the diesel truck to come charge them up yeah well actually we would charge it up with battery power believe it or not yeah okay yeah okay so i mean that's how things change and if you don't morph and change with that who knows that might turn into a big industry for us yeah you got to give it a shot don't you revolution is important man evolution is very important i think with every business you know we've said this before like the ones that always say oh but that's how it's always been well that's not a good thing you know you've got to at least have the things that have changed you know it's always done that way we've all why do you do it that way we've always done it that way horrible great way to think adaption adapt and change i mean i think we're pretty good at that as i said covered it's been good for that look at you guys everything's you won't be flying backwards and forwards to brisbane for a while that's it not without government i'm afraid oh we can operate it from auckland we can do what i do from here so that's fantastic we've got a massive massively good team in australia they don't need me i'm just the coordinator you're going we're going back to but going back to what you said what you said before one of the biggest like a few of us is i mean me as a business owner and one of our other um founding members peter leondis was was there we had this conversation on one of our friday night lives which was we all consciously made the decision that um for like my wife lee and i made the decision to said we're keeping our staff at all costs tonight yeah it was we need them on the other side of this we don't have a business without them um and i think i think a lot of that was it was key you know it's just it's what you got to do well that probably drums up the question any uh post covered um predictions due and terms with business what are we very busy when you require so there's a bit of a bit of a slow down now for um of some of the aussie guys here in lockdown do you have any um predictions for them post lockdown your post lockdown is going to go off excellent we you know all that all the indicators we have and all the people we rub shoulders with in our industry are confident that it's it's going to go off the thing is that you know the consumers bought lots of stuff which is coming into australia uh causing these facebook um but the other side of this is once christmas is over and chinese new year uh which is in february comes along um the world's going to change you know and it'll get back to some form of normality but what's normal now normal now is we've got lots more caravans lots more boats lots more motorcycles lots more vehicles uh and we our population's grown as a consequence of people coming home and you can't go out of the country so it's got to be all the numbers add up to being a very good uh next 12 months i think i think that's what arya's on the ground are saying as well i think are very very much in the same boat yeah that's a really really good summer summary of all that no one's going overseas anytime soon like you're not going to go to i mean you're close bg than we are we're not going to i mean i think there's more chance of us going to fiji than wa the way yeah but they're digging a trench they want to break away from the country this is just an excuse to actually put it in place now yeah yeah um but but i think that i mean realistically i think someone was saying to you today would you go to fiji and i'm like no probably not because i don't end up in a fiji hospital with covered actively i'm double vaccinated but i still don't i don't think i feel comfortable going with the kids or you know like you just don't want to encase something when you're over there that's a it's a medical flight home is it not not the flight you wanted yeah i mean that's not the flight you know what i i reckon this has taught a lot of aussies to have a good look at your own country because she's pretty flat as quietly you don't need to travel like you did you know um and i've spoken to people in australia in new zealand that say oh you always go overseas do you deal with it and and then you say to them well um you know what have you seen if your own country and that's embarrassing it is they just haven't seen much of it at all and it'll just open their eyes up to what's in the at their doorstep yeah and i'm sure that's happened i'm guilty 2052 we might be there i reckon we can drive up to the border and just have a lot of water then we can go to the board and have a look over the wall you're probably right it's easy to go take a ladder is it like trump he's building no i didn't say that i didn't say that you said that not me mate yeah i remember when i first got this gig and i went to wa and all the guys were getting on with me and the aussies from the east coast were saying how can like you get on so well with them you said i said because i'm a kiwi so many kiwis here but not only that is that i'm okay because i'm not from sydney or melbourne are you listen you're so far east it's okay yeah anyway i love them they're great no offense to our west australian members yeah we've got great friends here we'll get in trouble we are great friends here i love her love the place yeah i've never been see there you go that's embarrassing oh there you go yeah there you go so we're planning to go probably garage now we're planning to go over there but then obviously yeah okay pretty hard border there so it's killed yeah all good we'll get there anyway indeed all right that was awesome thank you so much that was excellent yeah thanks for having me really appreciate it oh no it's really everything was really insightful there's heaps loads of stuff i didn't know yeah there you go don't forget to join our private facebook page if you are an automotive technician and also subscribe to our youtube and our podcast channel they are all called the garage network thanks guys and see you next time
2021-10-03