Superstructure Moves Headquarters to Britain
ONE of Wellington’s long-established software developers, Superstructure, has moved its headquarters to Britain after beating British Airways and Emirates Airlines to become the biggest single supplier of safety management software to international airlines.
Superstructure was founded in 1984 and employs 20 staff in Lower Hutt and five in Britain. The company’s mainstay is a database for recording and managing information about safety incidents and hazards which is used by 57 airlines around the world.
It also makes a security intelligence application, SiD, which is used by government agencies in New Zealand and Australia.
Managing director Lindsay Gault says Superstructure is in “late stage talks” with a major British company which may become an investor, but expects to keep its development team in Wellington.
The company has set up a British company, Superstructure Capital, with an experienced board that includes a former chief executive of discount airline EasyJet, who is “by chance” a New Zealander.
Mr Gault says Superstructure’s SiD intelligence business could be split off into a separate entity. “Where we are sitting it is likely the two products will go different ways.”
A large US systems integrator, Keane Corporation, is selling SiD in Australia and may take it to the United States. It could take a stake in that part of the company, he says. Keane is listed on the New York Stock Exchange where it is valued at US$835 million (NZ$1.1 billion).
Some airlines develop their own software to do the tasks performed by AQD, but Mr Gault says Superstructure has benefited from weaker competition from its main commercial rival, a software package developed by British Airways that was sold off three years ago to Mercator, the information technology arm of Emirates. “They embarked on a major development and never actually got anything off the shelf, so we are making pretty big inroads into their market.”
(c) 2007 Dominion Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.