I had the pleasure of talking earlier this month with Clover Moore, Sydney Lord Mayor. The City of Sydney has committed to improving its environmental performance through the Sustainable Sydney 2030 strategic plan. As part of the ongoing community engagement program, I will be speaking at next month’s Sydney Town Hall talk on Democratising Technology. Hope to see you there on the 22nd May from 6.30pm onwards.

Finding reliable and cost competitive manufacturing partners is a challenge we usually relish, however this month’s turn of events had our heads spinning a little. After several delays and significant cost increases, we were forced to pull the plug on the Australian-Chinese plastic tool makers and move tool manufacturing and plastic injection moulding to Malaysia.

Jerry and I spent several days inspecting tool shops and manufacturing facilities on the Penang mainland, and have now started work with a world-class manufacturer committed to completing the tooling, plastics and sub-assemblies to meet our mid-year product launch requirement. The majority of product manufacturing will still be carried out at our electronic manufacturing partners in Sydney.

Last month we gave you a look at the team behind Wattcost’s product development. Rasmus our most recent team member, has been working hard on new branding concepts for the company and product packaging. I was planning to give you a sneak peak this month, however our IP team need to get the design patents and trademarks processed before release. Teaser… the new designs look spectacular!

While Jerry and I have been overseas, the development team have been hard at work back in Sydney, coding and testing the first product features for the Wattcost Beacon, mobile apps and cloud platforms. As a consumer focussed product, we’re always interested to hear what features you would like to see next in the product. You can submit your awesome ideas on the “Contact us” link at the bottom of the Wattcost website.

Stay tuned for next month’s email and latest updates as we near the official mid-year Wattcost product launch.

Best and warm regards,

David

CEO & Co-founder