TNA shows tenacity is the key ingredient

A local market too small for meaningful sales of a highly-specialised product. Overseas copycats. Prospects interested yet stuck on the notion that “it’s too good to be true.”

TNA Solutions saw a set of problems familiar to many early-stage Australian businesses setting out with an interesting bit of technology.

Their breakthrough invention, launched in 1985, could more than double the throughput of any other vertical form fill seal (VFFS) packaging machine on the market.

Twenty-two other companies in the world (none Australian) were making VFFS baggers, all offering 55 cycles per minute. TNA’s robag could do 120.

“The big problem for us was trying to get anybody to believe this,” said Managing Director Alf Taylor, who co-founded TNA with wife Nadia in 1982.

The plan was to go international right away as well as remain family-owned, said Nadia.

European and UK competitors saw fit to copy “the world's first continuous rotary-motion jaw machine” for packaging. It cost five years and $6.5 million, but the Australian company prevailed.

“TNA would not exist had we not taken out the patents,” recalled Alf.

Seeing an opportunity to do better than the equipment they were integrating with theirs on processing lines, TNA made a series of acquisitions to become a single-source partner to food manufacturers.

“Our only competitor was providing processing and packaging equipment, so they’d go into countries overseas and they would reduce the price,” recalled Nadia on the lead-up to this era.

“We only had packaging machines back then. They had more to play with and offer the customer than us. So they would increase the price of the processing and reduce the packaging so they came out cheaper than us.”

It made sense for other reasons. Alf added of the seven acquisitions in the 2010s: “We didn’t want to develop everything from the ground up… I would’ve been 150 by the time we finished.”

Nowadays, TNA employs over 600 and operates in 30 countries. Among its many awards are the Manufacturing and Advanced Materials category winner at the Australian Export Awards in 2022 and 2024.

From a single-product startup to selling custom-made “massive systems that are worth tens of millions of dollars” around the world, the company is evidence that an Australian-born invention can snowball into a manufacturing business of significant scale and impact.

“What we did, it was obvious to us that – what’s the population of Australia? 25 million? And what’s the population of the world?” recalled Alf.

“So it’s obvious, but I have to say, it’s not dead easy. Boy, do you find out problems! But in the end, if you’re really dedicated and you want to do it, it is actually very achievable.”

This episode of @AuManufacturing Conversations features Alf and Nadia Taylor, and was the opening session at our June 25 Spotlight on Scaling Up seminar.

Spotlight on Scaling Up was hosted by @AuManufacturing in partnership with AMGC, BDO, and the Australian Business Growth Fund.

Episode guide

0:36 – Introduction to the event and the presenters

5:02 – How Alf and Nadia Taylor met. “We fell in love among the potato chips” at Arnott’s Snack Foods.

6:22 – The company’s origins and the breakthrough invention, the robag.

7:45 – Customer Smith’s Chips Australia funds the first robag.

9:15 – The intention was always to remain a family-owned business.

10:05 – Setting up the first overseas office in Birmingham, UK.

11:20 – The difficulties of being Australian and some unfair preconceptions.

12:20 – The ANCA connection.

14:15 – Patent protection didn’t stop three overseas copycats. It took five years and $6.5 million, but they won the case and $8.5 million.

16:05 – Going from a bagging equipment maker to providing the entire line to food companies.