Eight months as XGRIDS' National Distributor for Australia: #1 in Australia, top 20 worldwide — and what comes next

This week XGRIDS confirmed the numbers in writing: every target set for the year, hit in eight months. Number one XGRIDS dealer in Australia by volume, Australia top three across Asia-Pacific and Oceania, top twenty dealers worldwide. What that took, the news we could not share before, why the 3D data processing service is live, and the part that needs partners.

A shipment landed in Australia this week, and every box in it already has a customer's name on it. Lixel L2 Pros, K2s, RTK kits, vehicle and drone mounts, batteries. All sold before they touched the ground. They go out one by one over the next two weeks, with onboarding, to customers right across the country. I recorded the video below standing in front of those boxes, because it is the most honest picture I have of where AECT is after eight months as the XGRIDS National Distributor for Australia.

If the embed does not load, watch it on YouTube. The rest of this post is the written version, with the links the video could not carry.

Eight months around Australia

Eight months ago we started taking the Lixel L2 Pro, the Lixel K2 and PortalCam around the country. New South Wales, Western Australia, Victoria, and home in Queensland in between. Surveyors, engineers, councils, film studios, universities. Same scanners, very different jobs: a council pre-construction twin in Sydney, a heritage record, a virtual-production stage, a highway corridor nobody wanted to close a lane for.

What eight months taught me is that the scanner is rarely the hard part. The hard part is everything around it: getting the unit into the country, getting it into the right hands with the right training, getting the data processed somewhere the client is allowed to send it, and getting a deliverable out the other end that a surveyor, a project manager and a councillor can all use. That is the job we set AECT up to do.

The numbers, confirmed by XGRIDS

This week XGRIDS put the figures in writing. I am quoting them exactly as supplied.

• →Every target set for the year, hit in eight months, not twelve
• →Number one XGRIDS dealer in Australia by volume
• →Australia now in the top three countries across Asia-Pacific and Oceania, behind only Japan and Korea
• →AECT in the top twenty XGRIDS dealers worldwide

Those are XGRIDS' numbers from their own dealer reporting, not ours. I am proud of them, and I want to be precise about what they are: a measure of hardware volume. They say nothing yet about whether the ecosystem around the hardware works. That is the part below.

What "National Distributor" meant in practice

It is easy to read the title as a sales badge. In practice it meant five things had to exist in Australia before the first serious customer would sign. Stock in the country, so a unit ships in days rather than weeks. Warranty handled here, with a loan unit when something has to go back. Training here, in person or remote, from day one. Onboarding here, with a staged checklist for every product so a new K2 or L2 Pro owner is scanning properly in the first week, not the first month. And solutions built here: the vehicle and drone mounts, the RTK workflow, the processing pipeline, tuned to Australian coordinate systems, Australian site rules and Australian clients.

The hardware distributor's job is done. That is not a boast, it is a milestone. Those five things now exist, and they run without me standing next to them.

The promise I made about partners

A couple of months ago I posted asking for partners, because this was never going to be built by a hardware distributor alone. The response is part of why the numbers above happened: professionals who took a scanner into their own vertical, geospatial dealers who added XGRIDS to a range they already sell, and industry specialists who brought us a problem we had not seen before. The AECT partner programme now has three brackets, from referral partner through to stock-holding dealer, three vertical pods, and a full-time owner in Ethan Song. The next job is bigger than the last one: supporting those partners properly and building the full 3D ecosystem together.

News I could not share before

AECT is now officially working with government and law-enforcement agencies, plugging the full-scale 3D workflow into the systems they already run. I will keep the names out of this, and that is rather the point. The work was never a hardware sale. It was our workflow, our data handling and our delivery process getting through some of the toughest security and procurement reviews in the country: onshore processing, offline-capable deployment where the site demands it, automatic face and number-plate redaction, and a record that stands up as evidence.

The short version, and the only version I will give publicly: we help law-enforcement and government organisations deploy an aerial–ground, geo-referenced 3D workflow that enhances the 2D workflow they already have, helps open sites sooner and provides 3D truth in evidence. If you sit in a council, a utility or an agency and the first question on your list is whether this has been through an Australian security review, the answer is now yes, and we can take you through what that involved.

The 3D data processing service is live

You do not need to buy a scanner from us to work with us. Send us your XGRIDS capture and we process it in Australia, on AECT hardware, and send back what you actually need: a registered point cloud, a mesh, floor plans, volume reports, or a photorealistic Gaussian splat scene you can open in a browser. Nothing goes offshore. New processing workstations are being built right now to keep up with demand. Turnaround, formats and how to send data are on the 3D data processing service page.

Not a traditional hardware distributor

If you buy from AECT you are not buying from a box mover. You get the whole workflow, optimised for your application: capture, processing, delivery and a compliant 3D data flow, done the Australian way, built for our environment, our regulations and our local workflows. Every byte of data stays in Australia. The ecosystem cannot exist without the hardware, but the hardware is where it starts, not where it ends.

The hardware is where it starts, not where it ends.

What comes next

• →Lixel L3. XGRIDS launched its new flagship handheld on 15 September. Pre-orders are open through AECT, our demo unit arrives this week, and I am taking it to every state and territory on a national roadshow. Details and registration are on the L3 page.
• →Partners. The programme has a full-time owner now. If you have a vertical and want a 3D system in it, there is room for a lot more people in this.
• →Processing. More workstations, more formats, faster turnaround. The service is the piece that turns hardware volume into an ecosystem.
• →Onboarding. Every product has a staged onboarding hub, the L2 Pro hub is live, and the L3 hub follows with the first deliveries, so a new owner is productive in week one.

Who we want to hear from

Three groups. Professionals who want to take this 3D system into their own vertical. Geospatial product dealers who want XGRIDS in their range with stock, warranty and training already in the country. And industry specialists, in mining, utilities, heritage, film, robotics or anywhere else, who have a problem that a measurable, photorealistic 3D record would solve. Start on the partner page. If you just need data processed, go straight to the processing service. If you want to try before you commit, hire a K2 for a week.

To the customers who backed us early, and to the XGRIDS team: thank you. Eight months, every target, number one in Australia, top twenty in the world. The next eight are the interesting ones.

Frequently asked questions

What does XGRIDS National Distributor for Australia mean?

AECT Solutions is XGRIDS' National Distributor for Australia: authorised sales, warranty, support, training, onboarding and rental for the Lixel and LCC range, with stock held in Queensland and data processed onshore. The full picture is on the XGRIDS Australia page.

Can I use the processing service if I did not buy my scanner from AECT?

Yes. The service takes XGRIDS captures from any source for now, and we process them in Australia on our own hardware. You get point clouds, meshes, floor plans or Gaussian splat scenes back.

Which government and law-enforcement agencies does AECT work with?

We do not name them publicly. What we can say is that AECT's aerial–ground 3D workflow, data handling and delivery process have passed security and procurement reviews with Australian government and law-enforcement organisations, and we can take you through that process in a private conversation.

How do I become an AECT partner?

Apply on the partner page. There are three brackets, Referral, Zero-Stock Dealer and Stock-Holding Dealer, and three vertical pods, and we qualify with you which one fits before anything is signed.

AECT Solutions is the XGRIDS National Distributor for Australia and a specialist in handheld SLAM and LiDAR scanning, 3D Gaussian Splatting workflows, onshore 3D data processing and ISO-approach HSEQ systems. From risk to ROI. Get in touch.

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