TOP PRODUCT: Roger Beattie with cultured blue pearls from paua. His company, Eyris Blue Pearls, is a finalist in the ANZ Canterbury Export Awards 2007. ``Demand is far exceeding supply,'' he says.

 

Roger Beattie is utterly chuffed about being selected as a finalist in the ANZ Canterbury Export Awards 2007.

His company, Eyris Blue Pearls, farms cultured "blue pearls" from paua and sells them to manufacturing jewelers in New Zealand, Italy and the United States.

 

Along with business software producer Particle Systems, guitar teacher Rock Star Recipes and Shapeshifter Technology, a producer of software for the apparel industry, Eyris is a finalist in the emerging exporter of the year category.

Business for Beattie is buoyant.

 

"It's really only this year and last year it's really gone berserk," Beattie says.

"Demand is far exceeding supply, every businessman's dream."

 

This financial year just completed sales have reached $1.2 million, four times the $300,000 the company achieved two years ago.

He puts that down to the spadework the company has done and the effort and resources the company had invested in marketing, including hiring marketing specialists at different stages such as Brian Richards, who is well-known for the marketing of venison through a new brand "cervena" and has worked for Kapiti Cheeses and Icebreaker.

 

Beattie says the name Eyris Blue Pearls reflects the link between the natural beauty of the human eye and the unique beauty of each blue pearl.

The blue pearl is formed by inserting a small piece of plastic into the paua shell over which a mother of pearl-type covering grows to form the blue pearl.

The company has five major customers in New Zealand and two overseas – one in Italy and the other in the United states.

The overseas customers were designers and manufacturers of jewellery as well as wholesalers.

 

The ANZ Canterbury Export Awards will be presented on June 28 at the Antarctic Centre in Christchurch.