News Profile | Bill Buckley
By Sandy Galland
Building big things always fascinated Bill Buckley, so as a teenager, he gave away high school and began a shipbuilding apprenticeship, figuring ships to be one of the biggest things you could build. Decades on he is a leader in the field of electromagnets and creating processes into machines which enable silicon chips to function as they do. His interest in nuclear physics started when his older brother studied mechanical engineering — being fascinated by this, he spent eight years working for Hurst Precision. During this time he met Hilton Glavish, a physicist who encouraged him to pursue his interest in magnets. “I was looking for a heavy machine to make big things and I figured that making magnets was quite engineering intensive.” From these unassuming beginnings, the journey was long and complicated, but Bill’s perseverance, that special blend of number eight wire mentality backed by a determination to make “it” work has seen Buckley’s Systems Limited (BSL) become a leader in the market internationally. “I’m an optimist I suppose. I like to get in and develop new ideas. I reckon that we all have to work hard to make a living.” Looking back over his career, while there were many challenges, Bill says there is nothing he would change. “I have always liked challenges in life but I also like to be left alone to just chug along.” This would explain why there is little information out there in cyberspace about Bill. Despite being awarded numerous accolades and awards along the way, he is a man of few words who places his emphases on doing, not talking. While very comfortable and confident in the output and contribution to the sector his company has made, he is reserved about talking of his role. “I just don’t like to talk too much about it, but I do know we have achieved quite a bit here,” he says. Bill seems to encapsulate all that made this country good — he is a man with skills, a dream and a desire to work hard to do the best he can do for the people who are relying on him. Like many of our pioneering business people he is also well versed in delivering understatements. Despite his and the company’s success, at 67 the future worries him. “I think the current times could make us into an entirely different company; I just have to figure out how to do it going forward. The biggest problem we have got is that it is such a complicated business and it’s hard to find somebody to live and dream and work it to the extent we did in the early days. That’s a bit of a worry for me.” Bill talks of the many limitations he has to work with today. “The cost; the green image the government wants — it is killing us. It’s really hard to keep going. We just can’t put up our prices like the city puts up their rates because they need more money.” The hidden costs of business are something the company must bear. “I can’t go to my customer and say I have to make his cost higher because they are putting a green tax on my electricity or because I need to meet some other hidden cost. They would just say ‘so what, we will go to China and get it made there’.” Bill says it feels like he is being forced out of the country … and he does not want to go. “I’m established here, and I like it here.” He reminisces about his early days and the Rogernomics years. “This really helped us get started. It made it simple to deal with staff and things like that… taking the costs out of things.” However, this has changed and the barriers in
Bill Buckley photography by Gerald Shacklock, www.geraldshacklock.com
front of businesses seem to be getting larger by the year, Bill says. While his order books remain packed, and the company continues to fill a vital role, with a lot of overseas companies relying on the products manufactured by BSL, the recent economic downturn continues to create difficulties in accessing capital enabling it to fill the orders. “During the downturn, we got hit really badly. We are generally the first to get hit in the world, and the first guys to get off the blocks. Now we have huge orders but I can’t get financial help to fill them. That’s our main hindrance.” Bill’s passion for big machines has been nurtured in both the yachting and motorsports arenas. As a young man he raced motorcycle sidecars, becoming a national speedway champion in the 1960s. But racing was not enough. In the early days after setting up BSL in 1986, he says he found the traditional approaches to gaining access to Japanese business markets were not working for him. Instead, he decided to grab their attention through Grand Prix motorcycling racing, which the Japanese dominated at the time.
“You can spend a fortune going up there to pester them, but I was keen on motor racing and I thought that if I built a big motorbike and went up there and raced it, they would notice.” Buckley’s response was the BSL 500 V3, regarded as New Zealand’s only homebuilt Formula 1 500cc machine. The twostroke raced as a wild card entry in the 1999 and 2000 Grand Prix Motorcycle World Champs. While his reckoning was solid, before he had the chance to make the bike competitive, Bill’s attempts to break into the American market paid off and the Japanese were soon knocking on his door asking for his help. Today Bill is still enamored with heavy engineering, spending a great deal of his working week on the shop floor. His perseverance will continue to drive the company. Throughout his career Bill has always put his life on the line (figuratively speaking). “Whether it is right or wrong, I have just always done it. More things pay off than not. If you use a bit of wisdom in your guess, then you have a 50/50 chance of making too much money or not enough money,” he laughs. The challenge is keeping it on the right side of the line. “You just have to get out there and do it.” Auckland Today | July/August 2010 | 25