Our Story

Define Instruments began in 1990 as Texmate Inc – the New Zealand R&D arm of an American instrumentation company based in California.

People always ask us about the name, so here’s the short version: it was a derivation of ‘Tech’s Mate’. As in, ‘a technician’s best friend’. Kind of corny, maybe, but it made sense in 1976 when Texmate Inc was founded (way before text messaging had even been thought of!)

Our first factory and design office was located in Henderson, Auckland. There our small but enthusiastic team of engineers began to develop instruments with the customer firmly in mind, always focusing on how to meet the needs of a particular industry without compromising on ease of operation. It proved to be a winning strategy, and resulted in many innovations which are now staples of the global instrumentation scene.

In 2005 we officially separated from the US company – our engineers were full of ideas for the small machine PLC market, and wanted the freedom to move in their own direction. It was a bold step, so to minimize the impact on our business we decided to keep the name, and became Texmate NZ.

Shortly afterwards we relocated from Henderson to Rosedale on the North Shore, but we quickly outgrew that location and in 2008 we were moving again – this time 5 minutes down the road to our current premises in Mairangi Bay.

With the explosion of SMS in the early 00′s, the name ‘Texmate’ became increasingly problematic, and in 2011 we decided that the time was right to reinvent ourselves as Define Instruments.

Aside from our name, not a lot has changed. The company is still managed by Anthony Glucina, the principal engineer for our R&D branch of Texmate Inc since its inception. We’re also still growing, and have recently leased the unit next door to our building in order to expand our manufacturing facilities.

But, most importantly, our engineers haven’t forgotten their R&D roots. They still love experimenting with new technologies and brainstorming ways to make our products easier to use, more efficient, and more useful for the real people who use them out in the field.