Family businesses tend to have longevity, fueled by a desire to continue traditions based on good relationships with clients and the community.

So it is with Ōtaki’s Mac Engineering, which has been in the McMurchie family for 40 years. It’s now run by Regan, who at only 33 still has some time to catch up on his father, John, who established the business, originally at his beach home in Ngaio Street, in 1983. Work then was mainly supplying moulds to pre-cast concrete yards.

John retired in 2020.

Regan bought Mac Engineering in 2019. He already had a bachelor of building science under his belt, had managed StressCrete in Ōtaki, and had worked at Fulton Hogan and pre-cast concrete company Stahlton. When John told him he was going to sell the business, Regan jumped at the opportunity.

“It was a good solid operation, and I really wanted to have my own business,” Regan says.

Four years later and he has no regrets.

“We’re flat out,” he says, waving at the full work schedule sketched out on the white board in the Mac Engineering office. “It’ll keep us busy for a while.”

The company has seven staff, including Regan’s brother, Callum, who has worked there for 21 years. Most of the team are on site in the Wellington region, working mainly on council projects.

Regan describes the business as a one-stop shop for general fabrication and engineering work, and hydraulic hose repairs. With a qualified builder and an apprentice, Mac Engineering also takes on general building work, whether residential, commercial or industrial.

It also has trucks and diggers for minor earthworks and landscaping.

“We kind of do it all,” Regan says.

Collaboration with other local businesses is key to the company’s success.

For example, Regan works with the Housiaux family’s Concrete Doctors just around the corner providing stencils for their vapour blasting work on concrete. It’s a clean etching system a bit like sand blasting – the panels on the front of Ngā Purapura in Ōtaki were created using this technique.

Others include the Ōtaki Rasmussen family’s Rasmac Contracting for a wide variety of work, and Specialised Washers and Gaskets nearby in Riverbank Road for water-cutting of steel to make stencils and components for their fabrication work.

While Mac Engineering is based in Titoki Street, Ōtaki, it has contracts ranging from Horowhenua in the north down to Wellington. However, most of it is in the Wellington area.