About
Fadiel NZ
About Us
Our passion is to enable people with disability to safely achieve their Love to Drive!
We are passionate about providing you the latest, most reliable, highest quality and safe automotive driving aids and hand controls in New Zealand.
We also provide you solutions for transferring to and from a vehicle, wheelchair hoists and wheelchair ramps for vans.
Our fully fitted high level assessment van is headquartered in Carterton, at Braiden International, who have partnered with us to provide you with a skilled team ready to help you on your Love to Drive journey.
Our Story
The Fadiel Italiana and Fadiel NZ Story…
Towards the end of the 1970s, Fabio Domeneghini, then a young and gifted engineer at Venice’s Marco Polo Airport, was determined to find an elegant solution to an ongoing issue: how to quickly and safely transfer people in wheelchairs on to airplanes. His response was to design and build a folding platform that could be applied to various situations at the airport and provide easy access.
This lit a fire in Fabio for finding other solutions to common problems, and the success of his platform gave him the confidence to follow a new career helping people with disability using his innovative engineering and design skills.
He quit his job at the airport to start his own company which he called Fadiel Italiana: FAbbrica (Factory) DIspositivi (Devices) ELettroidraulici (Electrohydraulic).
Fabio’s first ‘product’ was a car clutch that someone could operate with their hand. He combined the clutch control with the gear lever, adding a switch to the usual gear lever head. The larger knob required had a distinct look that gave birth to a new name: the so-called ‘duck’ clutch was born.
Following a spinal cord injury in 2006, Australian Paul Crake had married his Italian fiancé, Daniela, and was living in Italy. Daniela researched how she could help Paul get back to driving and came across Fadiel Italiana and their category-leading Satellite Accelerator.
Paul took to driving again with his newly installed equipment and got a new lease on life and was amazed by the positive effect regaining his independence had on his mental well-being.
After the couple returned to Australia, Paul found the driving equipment wasn’t anywhere near as advanced as the system he had been using in Italy … and a new business idea formed.
So, in 2011, Paul and Daniela founded Fadiel NZ in New Zealand alongside their Australian counterpart, Total Ability. They became the exclusive distributors of Fadiel Italiana in New Zealand and Australia, ensuring both countries now have access to the Italian company’s class-leading driving controls and accessibility equipment.
Fadiel Italiana is renowned for their innovative product development and in-house quality manufacturing. Their website can be viewed at https://www.fadiel.com/
Fadiel NZ
We know first-hand what it is to drive with a disability and wish to make driving a safe and enjoyable experience for all. To ensure this occurs for our clients, we work in collaboration with Driver Trained OTs and Specialist Driving Instructors to assist clients through the process of getting their licence and learning to drive with modifications.
A useful tool that we have developed is the Complete Guide to Driving with Disability NZ. It takes clients through the step-by-step process to explain what to expect on the driving journey. Download the free Guide to gain more information.
We also have a network of Installers who have been trained to fit our products in your vehicle. They are supported along the way and in turn they are your contact point post installation for service and support.
We offer access to a High Level Assessment Vehicle based at Braidens International in Carterton for drive from wheelchair clients and as a demo vehicle with all of our hand control options able to be trialled.
For more information contact Fadiel NZ on +64 98020897 or enquiries@fadielco.nz on how to access the van.
