Roofing company using drones to limit impact of price rises
Wednesday, 15 April 2026
The Post’s Under The Pump series investigates how the global fuel crunch is disrupting New Zealand businesses - but more importantly, how they’re planning to survive.
Absorbing 100% of inflationary costs is not a viable long-term business plan, and that’s left the country’s largest roofing maintenance company exploring new age solutions.
Since the war in the Middle East started, and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s main shipping routes for the energy and oil industries, fuel prices have skyrocketed.
While the cost of petrol and diesel imports dived on Wednesday following news of a ceasefire that has not yet been reflected in prices at the pump, new Commerce Commission figures suggest.
And that’s a big issue for roof maintenance and replacement company, Edwards & Hardy.
Read more:
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The company has 16 branches nationwide, employs 350 people, and undertakes about 1000 site-based jobs each week. It makes for a large vehicle fleet and significant travel requirements.
Edwards & Hardy marketing manager Gary McNamara said the sharp increase in diesel costs was having a meaningful effect on the company’s operating costs.
“Despite costs having risen by more than 80% in the past four weeks, we have continued to honour all quoted and contracted work at existing prices. So higher fuel costs are currently being absorbed by the business.”
To help manage that pressure and avoid the need to pass on significant further costs for new jobs the company was seeking greater efficiencies, he said.
It was doing that through scheduling jobs by geographic area and, where possible, using online tools rather than physical site visits for quoting on new work. It was also working closely with its suppliers to hold prices where possible on specific large-scale contracts.
But it was not just higher fuel prices that were causing headaches for the company. McNamara said rising material costs were adding further pressure.
“We have received higher delivery surcharges from all of our key material suppliers, and some imported products have increased in price by more than 20%.
“So - where we can - we are combining deliveries to our branches to help reduce the impact of these additional charges.”
Making the situation more difficult was that it came as the construction sector struggled to emerge from a prolonged downturn.
McNamara said the residential construction market had already been under significant pressure, and higher interest rates, rising construction costs and reduced buyer demand were affecting activity.
In the current environment there was limited room to absorb continued cost increases, and industry bodies were encouraging businesses to pass on price increases so they did not further damage businesses and the sector, he said.
“Absorbing 100% of inflationary costs is clearly not a viable plan for any business, but we will continue to focus on ways we can limit the impact on customers across our full range of roof, gutter and scaffolding services, particularly through efficiency, scale and technology.
“Our drone inspection and cleaning service is a good example of how we’re using technology to limit the impact of rising prices, providing a more efficient and cost-effective solution for some large or hard-to-access roofs and properties.”
Looking ahead, McNamara said the environment remained highly uncertain.
“Even if global tensions ease quickly, we expect there may still be a long tail of six to nine months before current costs fully work their way through supply chains, which is what we saw post Covid.”