Coretex CEO interviewed in DIESELTalk magazine

Selwyn Pellett talks to DIESELTalk Magazine about the merger of International Telematics Holdings Limited and Imarda Ltd, creating New Zealand’s biggest fleet management technology company.  

Read the article below or in the February edition of DIESELTalk magazine on page 5: http://ebooks.edocumentonline.com/autotalk/dieseltalk_feb16.pdf

Coretex: a no compromise marriage of equals drives intelligence

Coretex is a new name in the New Zealand transport industry as the company was formed in October 2015 as a result of the merger of International Telematics Holdings Limited and Imarda Ltd, creating New Zealand’s biggest fleet management technology company.

According to Coretex chief executive officer Selwyn Pellett, the beliefs and vision held at the beginning of the merger between Imarda and International Telematics have not only proven to be true post-merger, but are delivering on all commitments made by the parties.

“The strategic merger is designed to build a stronger business with greater industry capabilities, market access and focus, global reach, and a product portfolio that will deliver more value to customers and channel partners”, says Pellet.

Since the merger, Coretex has focused on its chosen vertical markets for its technology platforms that are construction, waste management, transport and logistics as well as cold supply chain; and its specialisation is being able to integrate its systems with others.

To quote the company: Coretex develops and provides asset management solutions that help logistics and transport operations to intelligently optimise their business through the smarter use of real-time information.

Coretex says its powerful telematics technology, which includes the ibright system and the i360 action engine, underpinned by Software as a Service, (SaaS), and hardware capabilities, collects and contextualises large volumes of data from a transport fleet. This means customers have far greater operational control and visibility of their mobile assets and these new insights create business intelligence so fleet managers can make real-time business decisions that make a real impact. Hence the Coretex tag line: Driving intelligence.

The company has seen 92% year on year growth in Australia, 79% year on year growth in the USA, and 9% year on year growth in New Zealand, and Pellett admits that it has to do a better job locally. “There is plenty of room to help NZ transport companies drive greater business value from telematics solutions, and Coretex is extremely well positioned to do much more of that. This involves a new powerful platform delivered into the NZ market very soon”, commented Pellet.

There are 108 employees, with 66 team members located in New Zealand, 26 in the USA, and the remainder in Australia and other territories. 

The company's secure and high functioning fleet management platform provides compliance, safety, and efficiency functions.

The compliance function includes road user charging, driver logs, food safety, Intelligent Access Program (IAP) and drive checks.

Under the safety function comes the monitoring of driver behaviour such as speed, braking, acceleration as well as hours-of-service/fatigue management.

The fleet efficiency function helps fleet optimisation, asset utilisation, fuel usage, waiting time, product wastage and maintenance. 

Pellett says that when the two New Zealand-based telematics providers met at an industry event, it became quickly apparent both had complementary and essential synergies which would marry well for a future together.

"It was obvious after an alliance meeting of NZ Telematics companies that the synergies between Imarda and International Telematics would create a future together," says Pellett.

"Imarda had more of a corporate DNA, and more direct sales while International Telematics had a great go to market presence," he says.

"Driving the merger of Imarda and International Telematics were sizzling opportunities in the US market that neither company was resourced to exploit alone," says Pellett.

There are more than 24 million commercial vehicles on the road in the continental USA, yet the telematics market has only penetrated 20% of it. (Source: Frost & Sullivan, Strategic Outlook of Global Commercial Vehicle Telematics Market 2015).

Electronic Driver Logs in heavy commercial vehicles will become a mandatory requirement under federal law in the USA by December 2017 and will dramatically accelerate the US industry’s adoption of onboard technology.

Hence, Coretex is now poised and ready for greater growth in this important export earning market.

"Joining forces to create greater revenue and substance to attract further external investment, means we are no longer irrelevant in a global context," says Pellett.

Through Milford Capital, Coretex is attracting $10 million in capital to invest in further research and development of its software and hardware platforms as well as market growth. Pellett says the investment by the Milford Active Growth Fund will help Coretex quickly scale to take advantage of market opportunities.  

"We are now fighting with some heavy hitters in the industry," says Pellett.

Bringing the Imarda i360 software product with the International Telematics ibright drive software and RUC hardware together has created a more granular product says, Pellett. 

"This more granular product allows customers to manage their businesses by exception and allows the action engine to automate functions as required by the client, he says.

 "The more innovative and sophisticated the clients business are, so the better suited we are to help them due to our action engine," says Pellett.

"We do the complicated well, as we are the contextualisers of data, " he says. "We do the complex easily but we don't make the easy, complex."

Imarda created its action engine in the i360 software from the ground up in 2010. 

As Pellett proudly points out, there are no "gotchas" in this architecture as programmers were creating it from zero code and not a legacy system. 

It seems clear that Coretex’s ambitious vision and newly combined capabilities will mean it is a company to watch in New Zealand and on the global stage; and a name to remember.