ST Hitec was first established in 1999 operating out of a small workshop in Newmarket.

The initials ST referenced the owner, Soichi Tate who, prior to moving to NZ, worked as head mechanic at Nissan in Japan. The main focus at ST Hitec was performance - the first step was providing and fitting the performance parts - the second step, testing and tuning the car on a Dyno machine, which was Soichi's speciality. With the experience he bought with him from Nissan, in particular his knowledge of the RB and SR engines, it wasn’t long before the name ST Hitec became synonymous with performance car tuning in New Zealand. If you attend a car show, you will soon notice the many cars sporting the ST Hitec sticker – many well known performance cars in New Zealand can attribute their success to Soichi's tuning, one in particular, the BNR32, VeilSide equipped 800HP R32 Nissan GT-R which has won many awards in many different competitions. ST Hitec also pioneered many import vehicle events in New Zealand, such as the VeilSide R34 GT-R Land Speed Record, Top Secret Drag Day and more recently the D1GP NZ Series. At the end of 2015, after 16 years tuning performance cars, Soichi made the decision to sell ST Hitec Ltd.