Executive Director of ManufacturingNZ, Catherine Beard, said the three main themes for manufacturers were around building talent to drive innovation, increasing government and private sector investment in R&D and building bigger companies through increased participation of local firms in government procurement tenders.

“Manufacturing is hugely important to the economy and all political parties should have policies to boost the sector. It is the sector with the second largest share of GDP, is the largest employer in Auckland, the second largest employer nationally and produces around 50% of our exports.“

“In addition, manufacturing has high productivity per employee, is increasingly high-tech and is scalable with a relatively small footprint. This is the sector that needs to grow if we want to catch Australia.”

Catherine Beard says talent driven innovation is at the top of the list to keep New Zealand Manufacturers competitive, and the government of the day has a role in supporting this, through;

High quality vocational education and training services that are turning out people with the skills required in the workplace.

Clearer pathways from school into the workforce and a high quality career guidance service.

School and University programmes in Entrepreneurship.

Clear incentives to Universities (e.g. via the PBRF) to connect R&D efforts to commercialisation success with the private sector.

Students graduating from the education system with the skills to grow the economy (science, technology, engineering, maths, literacy and people skills).

A more business friendly immigration system to fill skill gaps quickly and efficiently.

“In addition to talent, we need to boost our collective investment in R&D. Increased R&D leads to increased innovation and it is the innovators that will be successful globally and create high value jobs.”

“Last but not least, we need to ensure that local manufacturers get a fair opportunity to win the bigger jobs in the economy and often these are through government tenders. This requires ensuring local manufacturers have good visibility and contracts are let in such a way as to not disadvantage local participation. “Best practice” procurement should factor in the whole life value of a tender, including quality, durability, support and maintenance, flexibility and price.”