Founded in Sydney in the early 1950's, NID Pty Ltd started to attract international attention around 1960. Early sales in North America and Europe of its starch moulding machines and ancillary equipment, such as product cleaning and sugar sanding lines, alerted interested confectioners (and other machine builders) to this new Australian company exporting advanced capital equipment right across the world.

When NID's founder, John Faerber first became interested in starch moulding, he quickly realised that the traditional means of handling the trays and starch within the machine itself were both handicapping potential advances in speed and flexibility. Thus, the first NID starch moulding machine (or mogul, as this equipment is generally called in most languages) displayed several features unusual at that time, including the use of screw conveyors for starch instead of bucket elevators and scrapers, a walking beam for gentle tray transport within the starch section and swinging hopper mounted over a continuous tray transport in the depositor section.

NID's principle in the design concept of moguls has always been that of simplicity. Clear accessibility of all areas of the process (naturally taking into account the necessary safety features), eases the job of production and maintenance staff, making the NID mogul one of the most user-friendly machines in the factory.

With several hundred moguls in operation and a network of sales agencies around the world, NID recognised that the ready availability of spare parts and technical assistance was of extreme importance to users. Accordingly, a policy was evolved more than 40 years ago to create service centres in key areas, with skilled and experienced staff in daily contact with Sydney, so that all customers are effectively as close to NID as they could be with a supplier in their own area.

NID's designers remain convinced that production and maintenance staff still need to perceive simplicity and plant accessibility. They insist that all NID plant still leaves the factory not only fully tested and with easy-to-use instruction manuals, but also that all of the commissioning engineers are skilled at on-site training, and that customers get the most from their plants from the very beginning.

In the last decade we have seen the increasing application of electronics in the overall control of the starch moulding production line and of servo motor drives in the operation and synchronisation of the many and varied mechanical motions in the Mogul. In keeping with these changes, NID have specialised electronics staff that are responsible for all computer programming and provide installation service of new lines in conjunction with our commissioning engineers.

From semiautomatic mechanical machines to today's high speed automatic moguls with touch screen and servo controls, no other company can lay claim to have been at the forefront of every major technological advancement in starch moulding for fifty years or more.

Our specialisation on this one field of confectionery production has concentrated our expertise and we continue to remain undistracted by other non-associated ventures. The organic development throughout the history of NID Pty Ltd has provided a management structure which suits present and future needs. Departmental heads control all aspects of research, manufacture, customer service and marketing while commercial and strategic guidance is provided by the board of directors.