Casino Apr 07 P28-29 3/28/07 9:41 am Page 35
INTERVIEW
broadened what Aristocrat can offer. You’ve acquired
or backed a lot of very interesting technology and a
lot of interesting innovation, particularly with
Interblock. What does that mean for Aristocrat?
John Wilson: It means that in certain parts of the
world we can almost be a one-stop shop. For a venue
that’s looking for maybe 150 stations, we can go and
offer slot machines, we can offer Roulette, Baccarat,
Blackjack, Poker and a system, and a lot of the
operators have a preference for dealing with one
operator in some parts of the world.
CI: That’s a large outlay for Aristocrat in the little
more than 12 months. You’ve got 50% of Elektron?ek,
you own Ace outright…
JW: That’s right, but to develop the sort of product
that Joc and Tomaz and his team would develop
would cost us ten times as much and we wouldn’t
have done as good a job, so if you look at it from that
perspective, the outlay makes a lot of sense. There’s
no possibility that we would have had the expertise to
produce the type of product that Interblock has.
JP: Also, Aristocrat has saved a lot of time because
Above, left to right:
we’ve provided a ready product. We always respect the local environment, and
John Wilson, Tomaz Vipelj
information from local distributors and operators. We and Joc Pececnik
CI: So what is the plan in the medium term for collect this information and we develop that special
your partnership? product for a particular part of the world, or
JW: The G3 line has certainly got a lot of legs on sometimes for a particular city like in Macau.
the main three markets, so we are probably looking at
so as far as Aristocrat goes, redistributing in North CI: What has been the highlight of the last few
America, Australasia, South Africa. The G3 product’s years then, with all the changes you have seen at
largely new to them, and I believe it’s got several years Interblock?
of life in it. TZ: What we are particularly proud of is the
consistency of growth of both revenues and the
CI: John, what’s the feedback been like in North machines produced, and we are particularly happy
America? Interblock’s line looks so different from with 2006 as we have really conquered the global
anything else out there, has it raised a few eyebrows? market with our products. You don’t have to use the
JW: I don’t think they’ve seen anything of this future tense when speaking about how we will go to
quality. In South Africa. for example. the operators North America, because we are already there and we
called this one of the novelty games – I think are very happy that together with Aristocrat we can
Interblock took it miles past that several years ago, so also say that we have a 24/7 support globally, we are
that’s the barrier in some parts of the world that particularly proud of that. For all those reasons we
we’re needing to knock over, that attitude that games see our future as a pretty bright one, it gives us a lot
of this quality and innovation are novelties. of motivation and gives us a lot of prospects to grow
JP: We can measure our industry with the cash in in the future.
the cash box, so our boxes are pretty full in our part
of the world. We are delivering machines to Macau CI: You’ve gone from a largely European
and you know that’s the world’s fastest-growing manufacturer to being so much more in quite a short
market; we have a near-monopoly over there, with 99 space of time. With such expansion, it must be
per cent of the market. difficult to balance growth against operating costs.
So we will continue with the G3 in 2007 and 2008 Has that been tough?
but in September, we will start to supply our first TZ: There were some challenges but we have now, I
customers with Organic. can say successfully, overcome them two and a half to
three years ago. What we were aiming for is not year
CI: Is there any plan for Interblock to develop on year 200 per cent growth, but persistent growth
specific products for north America, or for any other on the year, which on average is about 47% year on
territory for that matter? Or is it going to be a year.
question of simply taking your existing product and With this consistency we always have the time to
introducing it to that market? predict the future and get ourselves prepared for it
JP: All our products are developed for particular from the point of view of cash flow point of view, the Read more about Interblock’s ICE
markets. Look around and you will see that Sic-Bo in technical side, marketing, production, facilities and stand in our show report starting on
Canada compared to Macau is two different games. everything else. page 30 this issue.
APRIL 2007 29
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