By Christie Engineering Products made by Christie Engineering

The Story....

Around eight years ago it all started when the Christie Family was on their annual fishing trip to the Northern Territory chasing the sought after Barramundi (a native fish for all those reading from overseas). This adventure was no different to any other time away, with us all having to switch the fridge off after the second day and start cooking our last lamb chops. Even the river water was warmer than the inside of our fridge at that stage with daytime temperatures reaching a very tropical 35 degrees.

On the second night at this river which we won't name, the fish started biting, 100cm + whoppers.... all we could do was kiss them and release them, we had to move on the very next day as we were all going to be in major trouble with batteries - we tried everything including solar panels and running the vehicle wasting fuel, which was futile as the fridge still stopped working a short time later.

When we finally returned from our disappointing episode up in the Gulf we were in the workshop and noticed an old car alternator on the shelf - the penny dropped! We started out our little project by sourcing one of the first of Honda's light weight GXH50 motors in Australia. The first prototype was belt driven, this proved to be too inefficient and bulky so we tried direct driving it using methods already proven in industry. To cut a long story short this concept arose as a solution for those travellers who love to stay in those remote places because of our own passion for the outdoors. Our little charger surpassed all expectations and the final unit actually put the charge an average fridge takes out in a day in as little as an hour!

From this first prototype model, business grew as did our customer base with now over 4000 units Australia wide and over 6 different models for customers to choose from out of over 90 distributors in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the UK and US. All our parts are sourced from the finest manufacturers in the world including Honda, Hatz and Yanmar and all of our alternators are Bosch. Our parts including bellhousings, display panels, frames, leads and start on demand modules are all manufactured here in Sydney by ourselves and our affiliated partners who look after the casting and CNC machining of our custom parts. Our quality control is second to none as all of our units are proudly hand assembled in our workshop and thoroughly tested prior to shipping. Any problems have always been dealt with instantly with no compromises on service.

As we are only a small business we have very little in the way of overheads and we try our best to push the best prices on to our customers.

We will wait and see what the future holds for us as a small Australian manufacturer taking on the world.

Peter Christie