Howard Wright research and development manager Anthony Batley and chief executive Bruce Moller. The company makes a majority of the beds used by New Zealand hospitals.

If you've ever been unfortunate enough to find yourself in a New Zealand hospital bed, it's highly likely that bed was made in Taranaki.

Howard Wright Ltd, based in Bell Block, north of New Plymouth, have been around since the late 1950s supplying beds and stretchers to the majority of New Zealand's District Health Boards (DHB).

Wright, who died six years ago, was a general engineer until a nurse approached him asked if he could make a hospital bed like one she had seen overseas.

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF Their latest bed the M10 won a Gold award in the Product Design category for its outstanding design and innovation at the 2018 Australian Design Awards.

From then on medical beds and stretchers were the centre of the company and everything else fell by the wayside.

Wright sold the business to management in 1997 and current chief executive Bruce Moller was one of those involved in the purchase.

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ANDY JACKSON/STUFF One bed requires 300 individual parts.

Moller said Howard Wright used to have a very big share in the medical bed market but things were a lot more competitive now.

"Of the DHBs, we probably supply most of them," he said.

But Howard Wright's biggest market is actually Australia, with New Zealand second, and the company has growing presence in the United Kingdom.

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF Howard Wright first started making medical beds when a nurse approached him with a design she had seen overseas and wanted him to make.

They have 45 staff across those countries and pump out up to 12 beds a day at their Taranaki base.

Their Bell Block factory is a well-oiled production line filled with impressive robot arms and state of the art equipment.

Each bed contains 300 parts and sells for between $4,000 and $12,000, depending upon the specifications.

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF The Bell Block factory is a slick operating machine with a mixture of people and robots.

And their newest bed, the M10, is award winning.

At the 2018 Australian Design Awards it picked up a Gold award in the product design category.

"Brilliant example of seamless product design, detailed design resolution, highest quality manufacture and all-pervasive design thinking across the company culture and brand values," judges said.

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF They have 45 staff across New Zealand, Australia, and the UK and pump out up to 12 beds a day at their Taranaki base.

It was the safety features that were so unique about the bed, Moller said.

"The premise of the bed is that it was to be the safest bed both for caregivers and patients. We identified three key areas of safety we wanted to work on - patient falls, pressure injuries, and cross infection and that safety side has features in it that prevent those three issues."

Howard Wright's most recent contract will see them supply 400 beds to Southern Cross hospitals across New Zealand.

ANDY JACKSON/STUFF Production Manager Greg Jones in Howard Wright's state of the art Bell Block factory.

Contracts like those are worth more than a million dollars.

Their biggest contract to date was Waikato DHB for which they produced around 700 beds in six months.

Moller has never slept in one of the beds they make, but admitted he had been tempted once or twice.

However, the research and development team had done a night in the beds for testing.

"Just to experience what a patient would experience," research and development manager Anthony Batley said.