From a Failed Business to a Christchurch Radio Company
Every great manufacturing story needs a setback, and Sir Angus Tait's came early. After returning from the RAF, where he had worked on airborne radar during the Second World War, Tait built his first mobile radio business from scratch. It went bust in 1967, done in by a bank pulling its support. He was left to work under a receiver for a year before rebuilding.
That rebuild became Tait Electronics Ltd, founded in Christchurch in 1969 with a founding team of just 12 people. Within a few years they had produced the first all-transistor mobile radios built in Australasia, and by 1973 the Tait Miniphone was setting the industry standard across New Zealand. It is a very Kiwi kind of origin story: a stubborn engineer, a garage-sized team, and a product good enough to beat the imports on their own turf.
The Decision That Kept Tait in New Zealand
Here is the part that matters most for anyone buying a Tait radio today. Several international companies made offers to buy Tait outright over the decades. Sir Angus turned every one of them down. At 75, he moved his shares into a trust structure instead, following a path similar to the one German industrialist Robert Bosch had taken decades earlier.
That decision is why Tait radios are still designed and built in Christchurch rather than assembled somewhere cheaper offshore. Sir Angus Tait passed away on 7 August 2007, aged 88, having been knighted in 1999 for his contribution to New Zealand technology, manufacturing, and exports. His legacy is not a plaque in a boardroom. It is a working factory that still exports the majority of what it builds.
How Tait Became a Global Mission-Critical Brand
Tait's growth through the 1980s and 1990s followed a simple pattern: build something rugged, prove it in the field, then expand. The T500 mobile radios of the early 1980s funded new production technology and an Australian subsidiary. By the mid-1980s Tait had moved into trunking technology, and by 1990 the T800 base station and repeater range was on the market.
The 2000s brought the shift every radio manufacturer had to make eventually: going digital. Tait launched P25 products in 2005 and, following the 2012 rename from Tait Electronics Ltd to Tait Limited (trading as Tait Communications), introduced DMR Tier 3 and P25 Phase Two platforms the same year. From there the product line kept expanding: TAIT AXIOM broadband and LTE devices, TeamPTT push-to-talk-over-cellular, and most recently the multiband, multiprotocol TP9900 and TM9900 radios.
Still Built on the Same Christchurch Campus
What has not changed is where the radios actually get made. Tait's manufacturing facility sits next to its head office on a single Christchurch campus, with engineering, research, design, and production all under one roof. It is one of the larger surface-mount assembly setups in Australasia, and it still builds to order rather than off a generic production line, because every customer's frequency, network, and configuration differs.
Seeing that process is more convincing than reading about it, so here is a short look inside the factory floor where the radios Mobile Systems installs are actually built.
Tait now exports roughly 95% of what it manufactures, and it has grown its customer base to include the London Fire Brigade, Transport for London's bus fleet, and public safety agencies across the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Not bad for a company that started with 12 people in a Christchurch workshop.
Tait Today: Company of the Year and Half a Billion in Revenue
On 22 May 2026, Tait Communications was named PwC Hi-Tech Company of the Year at the NZ Hi-Tech Awards, held at Spark Arena in Auckland in front of nearly 1,300 industry guests, including the Prime Minister. It is the top honour in New Zealand's technology sector, and the judging panel did not hand it to Tait out of sentiment for a 57-year-old company.
The judges pointed to Tait passing the half-billion-dollar revenue mark for the first time, growth built through a mix of organic expansion and acquisition, including Australian companies RFI Technology Solutions and m-View, and Wellington-based network operator Vital Ltd. CEO Dr Yoram Benit, who has led the company since 2021, accepted the award on behalf of the team and credited it to the legacy Sir Angus Tait built decades earlier.
Backing New Zealand's Emergency Services
Closer to home, Tait has taken full control of delivering New Zealand's Public Safety Network, the nationwide radio upgrade for police, fire, and ambulance services, after stepping up from a subcontractor role in 2024. It is exactly the kind of project that shows why Tait's radios end up in the hands of people who genuinely cannot afford a dropped call.
What Actually Makes a Tait Radio Different
History is a nice story, but you are not buying a radio because of what happened in 1973. You are buying it because it needs to work on a wet Tuesday in the Kaimai Ranges when a fire crew needs to talk to a truck three valleys over. So what does that Christchurch heritage actually buy you today?
- Built-to-order manufacturing: Tait's factory configures radios to your specific frequency and network setup rather than shipping generic stock, which matters when RSM licensing and channel plans vary site to site.
- Genuine DMR and P25 pedigree: Tait was an early mover on open digital standards, meaning its radios interoperate rather than lock you into a single proprietary ecosystem.
- A trust-owned company, not a private equity flip: because Tait is held through the Sir Angus Tait Trust structure, product lines and support commitments are not at the mercy of a five-year exit plan.
- Proven in genuinely hostile environments: Tait infrastructure has run continuously at Scott Base in Antarctica for over 25 years, which tells you something about how the gear handles a Central North Island winter.
None of that matters if the radio on your ute is set up wrong, badly programmed, or on the wrong frequency for your site. That is where the manufacturer's reputation stops and your local dealer's competence starts.
Tait Radios Available Through Mobile Systems
Mobile Systems Limited has stocked, installed, and serviced Tait radios from our Mount Maunganui base for over 25 years. We are not a marketplace reseller shipping boxes; our technicians programme and support this equipment for forestry crews, civil contractors, transport operators, and emergency services teams across the Bay of Plenty, Coromandel, Rotorua, Taupō, South Waikato, Volcanic Plateau, and Eastern Waikato.
Current Tait models we carry include the Tait TP2210 DMR VHF/UHF handheld, the Tait TP3300 DMR and analogue portable, and the multiband Tait TP9770 for demanding dual-band operations. You can browse our full range on the Tait Two-Way Radios brand page.
Is Tait the Right Fit for You?
Tait suits organisations that need long-term reliability over the cheapest possible unit price, particularly where channel licensing, DMR interoperability, or genuinely rugged field conditions are involved. If your team is running consumer-grade PRS radios and hitting range or interference problems, a Tait DMR upgrade is usually the conversation worth having.
