Ray Tomlinson, JT Group, Site Solution Specialists
Imagine being in at the birth of a world-wide success story. This is how we felt on the night.  Our most senior member, Joe Tomlinson, coming from Glasgow to New Zealand sixty three years ago started a painting company.  Known for its integrity, quality and value it grew over the years and later developed a house washing offshoot.  Joe's son, Ray, joined that offshoot and has turned it into the largest commercial building cleanwashing company in New Zealand, and a company that literally leads the world in its revolutionary technology. 
Techniques for cleanwashing the exteriors of large buildings traditionally used scaffolding or abseiling, water blasters, man power and lots of petrol and waste water.  It was expensive financially and in production of carbon, the machinery produced the same amount of carbon as eight cars.  Ray started off with traditional house washing machinery and developed it to new heights, literally and metaphorically.  He first developed automatic machines which could be controlled remotely and climb and descend and move laterally as they cleaned.  These were enormously successful as we learned from a previous talk by him, but now these have been developed further to be fully electric and battery powered.  Ray now has forty three machines around the country, of which 25% are electric, and  his firm cleans buildings all over New Zealand, including airports and Sky Stadium.  One machine, self-climbing on a fixed rope now takes one man one day to do what would previously have taken six men three days.  These machines can clean buildings up to sixty metres high.  Ray and his firm now employs seventy staff.  The latest machines are world-leading.  Using a battery pack they are silent, unlike the normal clatterers, produce far less carbon and pour no polluted waste water down drains.  The technology by which the machines cling to the buildings has Ray's international patents.  Moreover, it would seem that with the spectacular growth of the use of solar panels for generating electricity this technology will be used all over the world.  Currently the machines are made, using some imported components, by Melba Engineering in Lower Hutt and Ray wishes to encourage local manufacture, but if the technique does go world wide Ray will receive royalties wherever it is used.  Ray is a world innovator, and attributes his attitude to his father who pioneered the use of rollers for house painting and, later, spraypainting, both of which are now standard techniques. Thank you Ray for a very interesting update.