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Kordia on Thursday confirmed it will leave the joint venture set up with Tait Communications in Christchurch, to build the land mobile radio component of the planned new Public Safety Network (PSN).
Neil Livingston, interim chief executive of Kordia, said the company will continue to work on as a subcontractor, in a diminished role in the PSN land mobile radio project.
Livingston said Kordia can in that role free up resources allowing it to continue growing its business lines such a communications infrastructure, broadcast and maritime services, and to invest in cloud and cybersecurity areas.
The PSN part of the Next Generation Critical Communications system is a large project to modernise emergency services communications in New Zealand, and valued at $1.4 billion over 10 years.
It will use North American Project 25 (P25) standards, and replace the current analogue and unencrypted radio network for the Police, Hato Hone St John, Fire Emergency NZ, and the Wellington Free Ambulance with a digital, encrypted equivalent.
Tait said the land mobile radio network for the PSN will be delivered to emergency services by the end of 2026, across 400 sites countrywide.
Rumours that Kordia wanted to exit the JV with Tait had been swirling since at least March this year. At the time, Kordia avoided answering a direct question as to whether or not the state-owned enterprise was quitting the JV, which was set up to deliver new radio communications capabilities for New Zealand's emergency services.
Instead, interest.co.nz on April 4 received a statement attributed to Tait Communications chief executive Yoram Benit and Kordia chief executive Neil Livingston saying:
"There have been no changes to the Tait Kordia Joint Venture governance structure. Kordia’s contribution to the Joint Venture continues to be its expertise in building and designing radio sites for critical communications."
"Like any organisation working on a major multi-year project, ensuring Tait Kordia Joint Venture is in the best position for delivery is an ongoing priority."
"As such, we have recently increased our staff numbers, including onboarding additional highly experienced sector professionals, and in due course will be engaging sub-contractors to scale-up our site build programme – as had always been planned."
Now Kordia said it is announcing "a reset to its commercial partnership with Tait Communications formed in 2022".
This means Kordia will divest its shares in the JV to Tait; Kordia's subcontractor role for the PSN land mobile radio project will be led by Marc Rackett as executive general manager.
Rackett's LinkedIn profile says he joined Kordia in that role in May this year. Prior to Kordia, Rackett worked at 2degrees and the New Zealand arm of telco supplier Ericsson.
The JV has been renamed Tait Systems NZ, with Benit saying it has been scaled up, operations are reshaped, and experts and additional resources brought on board.
Benit did not provide further detail on the above changes.
He added that Tait now has "the right structure to ensure delivery of the components of the Land Mobile Radio network to emergency services as scheduled," which suggests this wasn't the case earlier, but no further information was given as to why the changes were needed.
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