Licensees

Boral

Boral Building Technologies took the license for Australasia and much of Asia. They were elevator manufacturers in Australia and they had 30% of the local elevator market, competing with great success with the largest companies in the world in this field. They also sold walkways under license from Thyssen. They completed the manufacture of their first model of the high-speed system and were about to start marketing the systems when, in June 1995, Boral Limited announced that it was accepting offers for the purchase of Boral Building Technologies (the holder of the license) and in September the business was sold to Otis Elevators who fired the staff, closed all manufacturing and kept the market share which was serviced from their overseas plants. As Otis was not interested in manufacture, but only in sales, LTS had no option but to terminated the license.

BAE Automated Systems

The North American firm BAE Automated Systems Inc. - a wholly owned subsidiary of the very large UK firm BTR plc. - negotiated a license to manufacture and sell our systems after reviewing our demonstrations in Australia.

They proceeded to manufacture a model of the high speed Loderway, printed a brochure and were about to start selling our systems. They were also close to finalising an agreement to supply systems to Otis, after that company brought nine of its most senior technical people to review the system in Dallas. Following a company review Otis decided that the system was commercially attractive and, as the worlds largest supplier of walkway systems, they wanted to sell it; the future looked very good.

Unfortunately, during 1994 and early 1995 BAE had been involved in the Denver international airport as providers of a very sophisticated baggage handling system. This system used some 3000 linear induction motor driven "telecars" to transport individual bar-coded bags over 30 km of track around the airport. Due to a number of factors the airport was over a year late in opening, and BAE, United Airlines, and the Airport became involved in a protracted legal dispute involving many millions of dollars. This dispute was still a major focus for BTR when we withdrew our license, and the baggage handling system has now been abandoned.

BTR's reaction to these events was to limit the activities of BAE, and they informed us that until they had re-structured BAE they could not immediately proceed with the Loderway project, which they intended to restart in January 1997. BTR personnel from London became very involved in the long-distance management of the company, and they did this so badly that they precipitated the resignation of BAE's President, Sales Manager, and Chief Designer among others, and the company went into terminal decline.

The company totally lost its way, and we had no alternative but to cancel their license. The company has since been sold and incorporated into another baggage handling firm. A sad end for an excellent company and a circumstance quite devastating for our marketing plan.

LG Industries

The loss of both licensees left LTS in a difficult position. There was no public demonstration from which to seek other licensees, and little in the way of capital to launch another attack on world markets. In these circumstances the Board decided to sell the company outright after an approach was received from LG Industries, one of South Korea's largest and most successful businesses.

We negotiated a successful agreement with LG; however they needed to see the system operating in public before finalising the purchase of our company. Qantas generously agreed to allow us a limited time (six months) demonstration in their Melbourne terminal, and we proceeded to raise just enough money, through a preference share issue, to fund it. This demonstration involved re-working the Mark III model built by Boral, as funds were not available to build the new Mark IV model we had designed.

Unfortunately a mere week before their scheduled visit - and because of the Asian economic meltdown of 1997 - the LG Board decided that in view of the collapse in the Korean economy, which nearly destroyed the company, there could be no further investment, and the whole deal fell through.

Fujitec

The Qantas demonstration - prepared for LG - was however useful in enabling us to license the large Japanese international elevator/escalator/walkway manufacturer Fujitec. They took out a license to manufacture our system in 1998, and paid an additional amount for our Mark IV plans. However despite building successive high speed prototypes they never managed to sell any systems. The reason lay in the fact that they had experimented with a system of their own before seeking a license, and this system was a metre high, compared with the 250 mm depth of our system. It was beautifully made but it could never be retro-fitted into an existing building for a real-life demonstration, and would have been expensive to incorporate into a new building because of its size.

The problem was that we had no demonstration operating and no further money to mount another demonstration, and because of the size of their system Fujitec was not able to install a demonstration system which potential customers could see operating in a public place with ordinary people enjoying it. They tried for years to sell complete airport systems off the factory floor and - for us at least - their failure was entirely predictable.

Despite having our latest design plans, they could not be persuaded to abandon a system that was the product of their own thinking, and to make a system designed in Australia! Instead they persisted with their own design; continually modifying it and incorporating some of our design, but sticking with the oversize system that could not be publicly demonstrated. As the years went by it was increasingly difficult to counter the perception that our concept was no good if a firm with Fujitec's reputation could not sell it.