- Working with LTA is one of those sort of projects
that you sometimes pinch yourself.
You look at their photographs and images
and things that they send through to us
about what they're building
and we kind of wonder what earth these guys are up to.
What they're trying to do,
is halfway between sort of Space Age out of a movie,
does it really exist? Are they actually for real?
To be involved with that is pretty exciting,
it's pretty different.
They're an incredibly skilled, intelligent bunch of people
that are putting this project together.
It's something totally different
from what we've ever been involved with.
The team sort of wake up when we talk about them
because what they're doing is completely unique
and divorced from probably anything we've ever done before
or possibly may do in the future.
- We are researching design and manufacturing
using advanced technologies to develop modern airships.
Airships are a lot more efficient
than aircraft or helicopters.
We can build airships that are a lot more capable
to deliver humanitarian relief around the world.
I'm excited about that.
How difficult could this be?
Well, actually it's pretty difficult.
We're very grateful to all the partners we have.
I found Kilwell online and during a trip to New Zealand,
I made an appointment with Jason Daniels, the head of production
and came down and visited with him early one Monday morning
and purchased some parts for evaluation.
And that was the beginning of our partnership.
- With their special requirements,
there was a lot of changes that had to go on out there
from rooms being humidity controlled and cleanliness,
cloth control, barcode scanning from start to finish.
Everything for them is quality controlled
from the freezer to dispatch.
- Kilwell is the best roll-wrapped,
carbon fibre tube manufacturer in the world.
When we began, we used their products,
developed using their existing methods.
But we've worked closely with the engineers
and the production management
to evolve their methods to meet aerospace standards
in terms of quality control
using rooms that are isolated
for air conditioning and particle management
as well as paper travelers,
that document all of the processes.
And over time,
Kilwell's methods have achieved FAA quality standards
and we're very happy with the work
that they've done in that regard.
- This project was scalability, high-spec production
and volume production.
And that was probably the biggest challenge.
Providing a service to the customer, which is very high spec
so the quality was extremely important
and at the same time, we had to make a lot of the tubes.
So we started with the prototype manufacturing
and just a few one-off tubes.
And at the peak, we had three shifts.
It never happened in the company's history before.
We had three shifts, five days a week,
24 hours a day making these tubes.
- It's something that's driven us to be better
which is really what you want out of a customer.
Usually we're trying to make their product better
but they actually made us better out of it
which was something that's really good to get out of it
and see the guys perform
to increase their standards was really good.