White steam venting from a geothermal stack into heavy cloud beside an insulated pipeline

Industrial plants that run,
and keep running.

Specialist industrial engineering: mechanical, structural, process, controls. Concept through to commissioning. Engineers working on plants throughout New Zealand, from offices in Auckland and Rotorua. Since 1990.

Dobbie exists to ensure process industries have safe, reliable and productive plants.

Est. 1990 | ISO 9001:2015 Telarc | Toitū Net Carbon Zero | In-house Design Verifier

Decarbonisation 3 Fuel switching routes off coal and gasbiomass, electrode, high-temperature heat pumps

Coal is out. Biomass and electrode boilers are in.

Dobbie leads New Zealand industrial sites through the fuel switch end to end: coal to biomass, coal to electrode, heat recovery, and high-temperature heat pumps. Concept and feasibility through detailed design, procurement, and commissioning.

Recent work runs from multi-megawatt electrode and biomass boiler conversions at South Island meat and dairy plants to a multi-million-dollar boiler efficiency programme: economiser and heat-recovery upgrades that claw back close to a megawatt of wasted heat on an existing biomass plant.

Energy services

Geothermal Rotorua office, inside theTaupō Volcanic Zone

Direct geothermal heat, from the source.

Our Rotorua engineers have designed geothermal plant in the region for decades. We take a direct-use scheme from resource assessment and feasibility through FEED, detailed design and commissioning. That means clean steam for process industries, heat exchangers and the secondary loops that carry heat to industrial users, pool and hotel heating, and timber and pellet drying. Today we are designing multi-megawatt direct-heat schemes for industrial parks, and reviewing plants we designed ourselves. Tauhara took an ACENZ Gold Award in 2007, and the NTGA (Ngāti Tūwharetoa Geothermal Assets) clean steam plant an ACENZ Silver in 2013.

Geothermal engineering

Refrigeration 30+ Dairy & meat processing plantsdesigned and delivered since 1990

Industrial refrigeration. Ammonia, CO₂, hydrocarbons.

From needs assessment and master planning to commissioning supervision and handover. Dobbie deliver performance specifications and tender evaluations, lead process safety and design reviews, and project manage the work. We have deep expertise across NH₃, CO₂, and hydrocarbon systems.

The Dobbie team have led some of the largest multi-megawatt refrigeration plants in the New Zealand food sector. Delivery of cool stores, blast freezers and process refrigeration, compliant with NZS 5149 and the ANSI/IIAR standards.

Refrigeration consulting

Specialist standing DV Engineering New Zealand registeredPressure Equipment Design Verifier in-house

Externally audited, internally accountable.

ISO 9001:2015, audited by Telarc. Toitū Net Carbon Zero certified. Having the Design Verifier on staff means pressure equipment design is verified at design stage, inside the project team. Every project runs on the same Business Management System, and our engineers use it every day.

Members of ACE New Zealand, Carbon and Energy Professionals New Zealand (Silver), the Bioenergy Association of New Zealand, and the New Zealand Geothermal Association.

More about Dobbie

Inside Dobbie · The team

Senior engineers, from start to finish.

We're a medium-sized specialist firm of about thirty people split across Auckland and Rotorua. Both directors still carry their own technical scopes, billable on live projects. When you meet someone from Dobbie, that's the person who will actually deliver your project. There's no account management layer, no discipline silos, no hand-offs. Just engineers, working directly with clients.