TTi - Trans Tasman Industries Race Gearboxes

Bruce’s passion for motor racing birthed his motivation to design and manufacture superior gearboxes for both car and motorcycle racing markets. A keen motorcycle racer himself (since his teen years) and the driver of the TTI racing gearboxes Ford race car, Bruce knows what race drivers need out of their gearbox. Bruce, the Trans Tasman Industries (TTI) founder, began cutting gears more than 30 years ago when serving his apprenticeship on the South African Railways, where he also learned pattern making, moulding and casting. In South Africa in 1986 he started an engineering business manufacturing and packaging machines and components. In 2000 he emigrated to New Zealand and began producing classic motorcycle gear boxes with the equipment he had shipped over from South Africa. TT Industries, the company, was born in Nelson in 2003 and Bruce started making complete gearboxes for Norton motorcycles. “I made the patterns for cases, designed my own internals and put them in,” he said. They proved a huge success among local riders in 2004 and then started selling rapidly overseas. That success prompted Bruce to design a similar system for car-based motorsports, a development project that took three years before launching first to the New Zealand race public and then another few years later internationally. From there the business has gone from strength to strength, winning local business awards in 2016 and growing to nine staff members. Bruce has travelled overseas to market TTI gearboxes in China, Japan and Thailand as well the UK and Australia. Over recent years Russia has proved to be a growing market too.