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Episode 62: The Origins of SOLA and the CR-39 Revolution with Rod Watkins

Sep 22
3 min read

Most people in Australian optometry have heard the name SOLA. Fewer know it started life inside a nine-person optometry practice in Adelaide, and even fewer know it briefly ran neck-and-neck with Essilor as the biggest ophthalmic lens manufacturer in the world.


In this first instalment of a three-part series, Michael Nasser sits down with Rod Watkins, former Technical Director and Group General Manager of SOLA (Scientific Optical Laboratories of Australia), who joined the company in 1970 and stayed until 1984, the years the company grew from 200 people in one Adelaide site to 4,500 people across 14 countries.


Rod takes us back to how a nine-person optometry practice ended up producing a material used in spectacle lenses worldwide, the trio behind it, the regulatory shake-up that forced the entire industry off glass almost overnight, and just how close the whole thing came to running out of cash before any of it paid off. It's a story of the risk, grit, and improvisation behind the lenses we fit our patients with every day.

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About the Guests:

Rod Watkins has spent over five decades at the intersection of optics, science and industry. After lecturing in optometry at the University of Melbourne in 1969, Rod joined SOLA International in 1970, where he spent the next 14 years as Group General Manager – Technical, helping steer the Adelaide-born company through its transformation from a small optometry practice offshoot into one of the world's largest ophthalmic lens manufacturers. In 1987, he founded Scan Optics Pty Ltd and led the company as CEO for over two decades, until 2008. Since 2011, Rod has held an Associate Professor position at Flinders University, continuing to shape the next generation of optical thinking.


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Key Topics with Timestamps:

1:14 -  Scientific Optical Laboratories of Australia (SOLA)

6:18 - Rod Watkins before joining SOLA and the early days of Laubman & Pank

8:43 - How a chance meeting with Don Schultz led Rod to SOLA

14:06 - SOLA's real origin story

16:20 - The people who built SOLA: David Pank, Don Schultz and Noel Roscrow

22:06 -  Scaling from 9 to thousands of staff

24:28 - Why CR-39 beat glass on weight and scratch resistance

31:40 - What let David, Don and Noel stay ahead of the growth curve

34:57 - The mandate that changed the industry: 1972 and the end of glass lenses

41:57 - SOLA and Essilor as main players in the production process of CR-39

45:05 - Why the rest of the world turned to CR-39

46:17 -  Inside the casting process: how CR-39 lenses were actually made

49:59 - Solving the 40% rejection rate

56:40 - The cash-flow crunch; staff loans, shares as salary, and SOLA's air freight bill


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