The Product Development Centre (PDC) is a research and development centre of international quality. This is an Otago Polytechnic and Otago Institute of Design initiative created to encourage innovation, enterprise and entrepreneurship, growing out of collaboration with other departments engaged in education, research and industry in the region.

The PDC is a catalyst for conceptual design and the whole pre-production process, including practical pre-production prototyping, rapid tooling and short run sampling.

The PDC is set up with a wide range of the latest equipment, to facilitate the production of prototypes at all levels of the product design and development process. It will provide the capability to produce designed components and assemblies to enable pre-production evaluation, testing and decision making.