Croker Oars Wins Major Award in Australia

2002 Australian Sport Award goes to Croker Oars

The Australian oar manufacturer, Croker Oars, has won the prestigious Sport Export Award at the 2002 Australian Sport Awards, announced in Melbourne last week.

The Sport Export Award is for Australian companies involved in the export of sports goods and services and is heavily contested by architects and engineers or major stadium and sporting complex projects, technology companies and those involved in providing services at major sports events around the world.   In taking out the award, Croker Oars was preferred to two other finalists: Cleanevent Holdings (a company which provides cleaning services in Olympic and other major event stadia etc) and Sportstec Limited (the distributor of an advanced performance analysis system for sports).

Croker Oars is based on Oxley Island, Taree on the North Coast of New South Wales.  They are the second largest oar manufacturers in the world, and 61% of their sales are export sales, with agents in 17 nations.  As well as traditional rowing oars and sculls, they manufacture oars for surf boat rowing, and transatlantic teams. Croker Oars began manufacturing timber oars in 1962 and in 1990 moved to the manufacture of carbon composite oars. 

In accepting the award, the CEO of Croker Oars and former international oarsman, Howard Croker that he was proud he was to be able to provide employment to over 15 people in the Oxley Island area, and to have made Australian oars a regular feature at top international regattas.