Interview: Bill Buckley talks about Ion Man

Bill Buckley grew up on a dairy farm in the Waikato and left school at 15 to do an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner with Mason Brothers, the biggest shipbuilding company in Auckland. He went on to found Buckley Systems, a company best known for designing and manufacturing precision electromagnets critical to the global semiconductor industry.

Recognised with numerous honours – including EY Entrepreneur of the Year (2011) and appointment as Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (2013) for services to technology, business and motorsport – Buckley is one of New Zealand’s most successful tech entrepreneurs.

The subject of a newly published biography, Ion Man: The Life and Adventures of Bill Buckley, by award-winning journalist Robert Tighe, NZ Booklovers asked Buckley about the book, his life and career.

You’re best known for your work with precision electromagnets, now used in more than 90% of the world’s silicon chips. Can you take us back to the breakthrough moment when you realised you were onto something world-changing?

The Auckland Nuclear Accessory Company, or ANAC for short, was one of the first high-tech companies in New Zealand. It was started in 1966 in Auckland by a group of physicists and technicians from the University of Auckland nuclear research laboratory. I started doing machining work for them in 1974 and I worked very closely with their magnet designer, Hilton Glavish.

The guys at ANAC knew the science behind the magnets but I was able to build them a lot quicker and to a higher quality than ANAC could. I dreamt up new ways of doing things. The amount of machine work involved in magnets really attracted me. With magnets, you’ve really got to get into the nitty-gritty of machining. ANAC would come to me with drawings for magnets and I was often able to come up with suggestions to make them a lot more efficiently.

In 1981, a major downturn in the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley coincided with a worldwide recession that hit the US particularly hard. ANAC’s magnet business disappeared overnight and when the company went into receivership in 1982, I picked up a lot of the machines I needed to win the ANAC business back.

It took me a few years but after four or five failed sales trips to the US, I started to get some decent orders. Then in 1987, Black Monday saw stock markets around the world take a hammering. It hit a lot of American technology companies hard and many of them struggled to survive. Ironically, it turned out to be a godsend for my business. The New Zealand dollar was low and I was able to offer a quality product at a competitive price. That really helped BSL get a foot in the door and once I had it wedged open there was no bugger going to shut it on me.

We delivered a reliable product and even when the New Zealand dollar recovered, the US companies still wanted our magnets because they were better than what anybody else out there could produce. There were other companies making magnets, but the head honchos didn’t come from a toolmaking background. Most of them were electrical engineers. I came from a machining background and the machining is the hard part. That gave me a big advantage. I convinced them I could make a high-tech magnet in New Zealand and ship it halfway around the world and the business went from strength to strength after that.

Your motto seems to be “go after the stuff that is too complicated for the average engineer.” Where did that drive to tackle the toughest challenges come from?

I was very mechanically minded from an early age and I was driving a tractor by the time I was five. Living on a farm we grew up around machines and I reckon I was born with the ability to pull things apart and figure out how they worked. We had a lathe, a drill, a couple of welders and a whole load of old tools in the shed. I’d spend hours in there with Dad and on my own, pulling engines and machines apart and putting them back together again. Dad was a great inventor and the local fix-it man. He mended tractors and mowers for the neighbours and made his own gates and trailers. He taught me the basics about how an engine worked and whatnot, but I learned mainly by doing things myself.

I built a cart for carrying the creamery cans, a machine for cleaning out drains, and a big wooden chicken coop. I hotted up a Fordson Major tractor one time. It was made to do 15 miles per hour but by the time I was finished with the engine, it had a top speed of closer to 50 miles per hour.

One summer I turned the washing line into a merry-go-round and I built my own toy car with a petrol engine when I was nine or ten. The chassis was welded together with lengths of angle iron and the steering box was made from a crank-handle grinder. It had lawnmower wheels and a Briggs & Stratton kick-start engine that I hijacked from an old concrete mixer. I got quite handy in this little car even if I got the steering backwards. When you turned the steering wheel left, the car went right and vice versa. Still, I knocked a lot of fun out of it.

When I turned fifteen my old man encouraged me to get a trade. He knew I was handy with engines and machines, so he suggested an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner.

‘I want to build the biggest thing you can think of,’ I told my father. I’ve always liked big things. The Kōpaku coal mine was just up the road from us and I was fascinated by the big earthmoving machines and the aerial conveyor belts that transported coal to Meremere Power Station.

My father told me about Mason Brothers, the biggest shipbuilding company in Auckland at the time. I thought a ship would be about the biggest thing I could build so I applied for an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner with Mason Brothers.

A few years later, when I started my own business, I was always much more interested in the difficult jobs rather than the straightforward ones. That’s why I was so attracted to the magnet business. It’s no good doing what anyone else can do. You have to go after the stuff that is too complicated for the average engineer so you can be Johnny on the spot when the demand hits.

From motorcycles and speedway to sailing superyachts, you’ve thrown yourself into high-adrenaline pursuits. Do you see a link between your hobbies and your approach to business?

To be a good machinist you’ve got to push the machine to its limits. You’ve got to take risks. It’s all about forward motion and pushing the boundaries. Race-car drivers talk about how a car is like an extension of their body, and machining is the same. If you try to work off the instruction manual, you’ll never do as good a job as the guy that lives and breathes machining. You have to be in sync with the machine. I read the instructions, but I always found ways to make the machine do a bit more than what the manufacturers meant for it to do. I think that instinct came from growing up on the farm and working with my hands from an early age.

I’ve never been afraid to take risks whether that’s in business or riding a motorcycle in a speedway race. I rode every race full on and took on every challenge that was put in front of me. You need balls or guts or whatever you want to call it to ride speedway and run a successful business. I got the same adrenaline rush from both. In speedway and in business you’ve got decisions to make and you can’t let fear get in the way of making the right decision.

The book is described as part autobiography, part oral history, with contributions from colleagues, friends and family. Was it strange to read other people’s perspectives on you woven into your own story?

Yes, but I thought they over did it a bit.

You’ve often said you prefer the shop floor to the boardroom. What do you get from being hands-on that you can’t find behind a desk?

Pushing the envelope and creating something out of nothing is what motivates me. When you’re manufacturing something, you’re bringing it to life. Machining is my artwork. The engineering shop is my studio and a new job is like a blank canvas. Recently, I was looking at a magnet that we built and I spent quite a bit of time admiring the work that went into it. I’m happiest when I can pull on my overalls and work on the old, manual lathe in my workshop in the factory. It’s still good for the odd little job, like myself.

I built a boat during Covid to keep me occupied. It all started with my holiday house in Omaha. It had a boatshed and I thought it might be good to build a boat to fill it. I’m not a person to go and sit on a beach and I figured building a boat would keep me busy.

It’s a 19-foot Chris-Craft, a beautiful wooden launch, and a few of my mates mucked in at weekends to help me build it. Most of them hindered me instead of helping me but it was good fun and it was nice to get it finished and out on the water. I’m not even a boat person. I’ve taken it out once since I launched it, but I enjoyed building it.

I feel I can build anything with my hands and to a pretty good standard. The boat’s a good example of that. Everybody just looks at it with awe and says, ‘Christ, I can’t believe you built this yourself.’ Neither can I sometimes.

Buckley Systems has faced its fair share of ups and downs over the years. What’s been the toughest moment, and how did you get through it?

The big crash in 2008/2009. It was the first time I had to lay people off. It really got to me. I got shingles from it and my Accountant disappeared on me, leaving it all on my shoulders.

You’ve been recognised with awards like EY Entrepreneur of the Year and Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Do those honours mean much to you, or is your satisfaction more in the work itself?

I accepted them for the company more than myself.

Your family history, particularly the story of William Buckley, the convict who survived 32 years in the Australian bush, plays a part in the book. Do you feel that pioneering spirit runs in your veins?

I grew up hearing stories from my grandmother, Bangy, and my father, Tuppy about a relative of ours named William Buckley who escaped a penal colony. He was given up for dead and when he was found by British settlers, over 30 years after he escaped, they doubted his improbable survival story. He told them he had lived in the Australian outback with an Aboriginal tribe, but they figured it was impossible for a white man to survive in the bush with the natives.

I was in Australia a few years ago and I was telling a friend of mine all about this William Buckley character I’d grown up hearing stories about. Not long afterward, she met a book restorer who told her about a book he’d come across about a convict named William Buckley. My friend said, ‘I know a relative of Buckley who would like to buy that book.’ It cost me over a thousand bucks, but it was well worth it.

There are some incredible stories in his book and I learned that he died a free man in Hobart, Tasmania at the age of 76. I’d like to think I’ve got some of his pioneering spirit and his never-say-die attitude running through my veins.

At 80, you’re still working on the factory floor and dreaming up new projects. What’s next for you — and for Buckley Systems?

I am trying to get the BNCT machine to become the top cancer curing machine. I have had radiation treatment and build proton and carbon machines for customers, but I am still convinced our BNCT machine is the best way to treat fixed tumour cancers.