CRACKER INVENTION: Ayla Hutchinson, 14, has invented a safe device to chop kindling that is gaining interest around New Zealand.

Watching her mother cut herself chopping kindling led to a winning science project and a new business for a Taranaki teen.

And already, there is overseas interest in the device, with one company wanting up to 15,000 of the devices a week.

Last year Ayla Hutchinson, 14, was in year 8 at Norfolk School and had to come up with an invention for her science project.

After her mother, Claire, cut herself, Ayla decided there had to be a better way.

So, she came up with the Kindling Cracker, which is a device that removes the risk of chopping fingers while chopping wood.

The Kindling Cracker has a fixed blade on to which the operator hammers the wood and conveniently splits it into kindling.

Her invention won a prize at the Fonterra Taranaki Science and Technology Fair.

A year later she is a finalist in another award, the New Zealand Innovators Most Inspiring Individual. The winner will be announced on October 17.

And her family's Tariki lounge is full of boxes ready to send out the first 200 orders.

Ayla has a stencil with her Kindling Cracker logo, which the family, Dad Vaughan, Mum Claire and younger sister Jasmine, 12, have spraypainted on every box. The first 200 Kindling Crackers arrive this week from the Whanganui factory that is manufacturing them. They have to be painted before each one is tested, boxed up, and finally sent off, Ayla said.

"It's awesome seeing it come to life."

The family is in talks with a United States company which is looking to import 10,000 to 15,000 Kindling Crackers a week, she said.

If the deal is made, an Auckland company will manufacture and distribute the kindling crackers to the United States.

Ayla first realised she was on to a winner when she took her invention to Fieldays earlier in the year and won both the Fieldays Young Inventor of the Year and the James & Wells' Intellectual Property Award, collecting a total of $4000 in prize money.

"It was unbelievable. I didn't expect it."

About 400 people climbed over a pile of kindling she had cut to register their interest in her notebook, she said.

"We thought we'd have to go and start making them at a foundry or somewhere. We tried one in Taranaki, but it didn't work out."

Now she is getting them made in Whanganui.

Ayla has used her prize money to fund the business so far and her parents have been helping getting the patents sorted.

The Kindling Cracker sells for $125 including GST and postage.

Buy New Zealand made had entered Ayla into its People's Choice awards, Mrs Hutchinson said.

You can vote for Ayla in the Best New Product and Most Innovative Product categories here.

And for the Idealog Peoples' Choice Award here.