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History
and experience of MacPhee Engineering
Harvesting equipment
MacPhee Engineering began by designing and building potato
planting, harvesting and grading machinery, mainly in the Rangitikei
and Pukekohe. We also manufactured Potato Bag Loaders
and Forage harvesters.
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| Haigh
Frozen Foods set up their business at Rata and we developed a
very good relationship, copying and generally supporting the development
of the frozen food machinery. This included hand making
everything from pea pumps, pea meters, bean cleaners and carrot
and corn washers and graders, chip fryers, heat exchanges etc. |
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of our ability to deliver on time and go the extra mile for our
client came when another company could not deliver.
We under took to make 2 complete pea harvesters in 5 months.
Our approach was to strip an existing pea harvester down and
copy it religiously so all parts were interchangeable in case
one was damaged and needed spares. The first pea
harvester machine was delivered to Doug Haigh on Christmas Day
and worked for a week before it needed any attention.
After 4 hours of modifications it completed the season with
less attention than the originals.
We also built the blast freezers and coldstores for Haigh/Jim
Bull Group and Watties, Feilding. I believe that the Feilding
blast tunnel is still operating 15 years later.
Additionally, we built a complete effluent disposal system
using aeration removal, disposing of 30-40 ton of sewage per
day to environmental requirements.
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Farming
The farming industry began to boom and we built
literally thousands of square metres of covered yards throughout
the Central North Island. Some of these included
the additional design of specialised machinery to erect the
buildings in very extreme positions.
We developed a excellent woolshed design which led us into commercial
buildings these included a Fiat franchise, a knitting mill,
a very large woolstore and a few coldstores, potato sheds etc.
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Wool shed
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Hanger with Cessna
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Caltex Service Stations
With the downturn in farming this era slowed. In mid
winter 1985 Caltex Oil invited us to help with their Waiouru
service station project. Our only sub-contractor
on the Caltex project was an electrical ~ we did
the rest. A strong relationship with Caltex
developed and continued for the next 10 years and 115 service
stations later.
We have worked very closely with a very innovative and sometimes
radical Design Engineer over this time and have helped develop
Caltex Service Stations, Carwash Units, Truckstop kiosks, Air
and Water stands and Caltex Signage.
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Click
on image to enlarge
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Caltex Service Station assembly
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Completed Service Station
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Caltex signage
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Caltex Air & Water Stands
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Carwash Building
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In between times
We joined up and formed Rangitikei Marine with a few other
locals. Originally in Rata, this developed with
a move to Bulls and Palmerston North. The company
fitted out boats and built the trailers.
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