Developments

What is stopping competition in New Zealand?

As New Zealanders grapple with the cost of everyday essentials, from the supermarket checkout to power bills and bank fees, pressure is growing to address weak competition in critical sectors. Rebalancing Markets: Competition, power, and a fair economy, hosted by Business School research centre Juncture: Dialogues on Inclusive Capitalism, saw experts in regulation, energy, consumer behaviour, law and economics examine why competition remains weak and what could help rebalance the system. The discussion comes as the Commerce Commission’s latest report on the state of competition in New Zealand suggests market conditions favour larger established businesses, making it harder for smaller and newer firms to displace these dominant players. Electricity, gas, water, and waste services, and financial and insurance services were identified as the areas most lacking competitive pressure. The Commission’s Deputy Chief Executive Raj Krishnan brought insights from the competition and consumer watchdog to the panel discussion. Another panellist, Business School alumnus Tex Edwards, the founder of independent public policy and research group Monopoly Watch, and telecommunications company 2degrees, says the Commerce Commission has clearly identified the country’s competition problems. “Parliament must arm the Commerce Commission with the powers, and protect it from lobbyists, so the evidence can be translated into lower prices, more choices, and a fairer economy.” Dr Eric Crampton, chief economist at the New Zealand Initiative and adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury, says too often, governments create the market power they later condemn. “District plans often have rules banning new supermarkets in particular locations, and consenting processes that force entrants to prove they will not compete with established businesses,” he says. “When markets are open, underperformance by established players becomes an opportunity for entrants and better service for consumers. When entry is blocked by law, regulation, planning, licensing or procurement, market power becomes entrenched.” Dr […]

Want to break free from big tech? ‘Self‑hosting’ could be the answer

Nikolai Hampton, School of Science, Edith Cowan University Paul Haskell-Dowland, Professor of Cyber Security Practice, Edith Cowan University You’re probably familiar with the idea that in the world of big tech, “we” are the product. Our data is the currency being traded every time we navigate our social media feeds. Tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft offer valuable services, but it comes at a price. They host our email, photos, backups, files, calendars, reminders and contacts. If you also include all the smaller startups and niche solutions, you’ll quickly see your security cameras, electronic locks, home appliances and even your toothbrushing schedules are all online – far removed from any physical box or device that you have any control over. But there is a way to break free from big tech. It’s called “self-hosting”. Your life, online Many of these large tech providers do a good job of securing your data and enabling you to access services across devices and platforms. They allow novice users with almost no technical skills to interact with and share their data at little cost. However, being reliant on these companies isn’t risk-free. Google, Amazon and Meta have been implicated in unexpected or questionable uses of data. Having high-value data concentrated in well-established systems also provides cyber criminals and scammers with obvious targets to spam, imitate (spoof) or hack. Users are also completely at the mercy of these companies should they decide to raise their fees, change their terms of service, or even discontinue access. What exactly is self-hosting? Self-hosting is a general catch-all term for taking control of your own data. This shifts your data from big tech giants and moves it to self-managed applications. Your data is on your own systems and you have complete control over who can […]

Mind the Gap: Closing the distance between AI hype and factory reality

From August 2026 issue NZ Manufacturer magazine. Manufacturers are under pressure to adopt AI fast. But an AI that doesn’t know your operation isn’t a productivity tool — it’s a liability with good grammar. Here’s why AI needs grounding before you let it loose on your business. By Ursula Riemer, Quanton Let me tell you about a $20,000 mistake that never happened. A colleague of mine was clearing out a flat recently — previous tenants, a real mess, the works. He turned to an AI assistant to help him work through the paperwork and the next steps. And for the better part of two weeks, the AI was adamant: before you do anything else, you need to deal with the asbestos. So he did what any sensible person would. He got people in to inspect. He got quotes. He worked out what he could and couldn’t do himself. Something like thirty hours of effort, and a job that was shaping up to cost around twenty thousand dollars. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked the obvious question the AI had never prompted: is this asbestos actually non-compliant? Is it really a problem? And the answer came back — well, not necessarily. As it turns out, there was no asbestos issue. No $20,000 job. None of it was real. Two weeks of worry and effort, sent down a rabbit hole by a confident machine that had never been given the right context to begin with. It’s a funny story when it’s a flat. It is a great deal less funny when it’s your factory, your supply chain, or your compliance obligations. And that gap — between what AI confidently tells you and what’s actually true for your business — is the thing I want manufacturers to think hard about right now. […]

Diane Hurford during a factory visit in China in 2025

From Garage to Global: 20 years of Brolly Sheets

Family-owned, Kiwi-designed brand Brolly Sheets began with a problem at home. Founder Diane Hurford sewed the first Brolly Sheet after repeated middle-of-the-night bed changes during toilet training. The reusable, absorbent, waterproof bed pad quickly gained traction. What started as a homemade solution grew into a New Zealand manufacturing and export business. On the company’s 20th anniversary, Diane speaks with the EMA’s Nicholas Russell about the journey from a single prototype to large-scale production. Brolly Sheets grew from a home and garage-based operation into a major exporter with international manufacturing partners. Tell us about your expansion journey. Diane Hurford: I started working with James, who runs a small countryside factory in China, almost 20 years ago. I actually found James on Alibaba. I contacted a number of manufacturers and received plenty of responses, but James stood out because he clearly understood the product and the manufacturing process. Back then, Alibaba was a much smaller platform and there were real risks. Anyone could create a profile, so there was no guarantee you were dealing with a legitimate business. I was lucky to find someone I could trust. At the time, James worked for a larger manufacturer. As our relationship developed, he made the decision to leave and start his own company, with Brolly Sheets as his very first customer. Today, his business manufactures products for companies around the world, and we’re still working together. That first trip to China to meet James was nerve-wracking – meeting a stranger at the airport and driving three hours to a hotel in a different town. It proved worthwhile. James and I have built our businesses together ever since, and we alternate visits each year. It’s a genuine friendship. Your products are designed in New Zealand but manufactured offshore. What led you to that decision? A […]

Stop managing outcomes, start managing behaviour

Your culture is the operating system driving those results — whether you measure it or not Ask a room of manufacturing leaders whether culture matters and every hand goes up. Ask them how they measure it, or when they last deliberately intervened in it — and the hands come down. Fast. We all agree culture is important. We just treat it as weather — something that happens to us, that we try to improve with a team lunch or new values on the wall — rather than as a system we designed, maintain, and are accountable for. David Altena has 30 years of tech industry experience and is a founding director of The Better SMB Limited.david@altena.solutions. Culture isn’t what you say. It’s what people actually do, every day when no one is watching. Not the values document, the behaviour. If you want to know your culture, watch what gets tolerated. Rob Bull, Director of the New Zealand Lean Academy. rob@nzla.nz Culture is the collective behaviour of people in an organisation — not the values on the wall (Schein, 2009). The values on the wall problem Somewhere in our journey, New Zealand businesses fell in love with values statements. Integrity. Innovation. People First. They appear in reception areas, on websites, in job ads. A new operator starts on the floor and within a fortnight understands exactly which values are real and which are decoration. Not because anyone told them — but because they watched. They watched how their manager handled a mistake. Who cleaned up to the agreed standard at the end of the day. Whether the people who got promoted embodied the values or just hit the numbers regardless of how. Culture is transmitted through behaviour, not documents. Every decision a leader makes is a cultural signal. Whether they intended […]

Profile: Green Gorilla tells sustainability story that matches its impact

Green Gorilla has spent more than a decade challenging the idea that waste should simply be hauled away and buried. Since 2010, the 100% New Zealand-owned business has grown into a major waste and resource recovery operator, helping customers recover more materials, reduce landfill and take a more practical approach to circular economy outcomes. Working across construction and demolition, commercial and industrial waste, residential collections, multi-unit dwellings, compostable waste and green waste, Green Gorilla operates resource recovery facilities and transfer stations across Auckland, Waikato and Tauranga. Its aim is to maximise recovery, reuse and recycling so landfill becomes the last resort, not the first port of call. That approach has helped Green Gorilla build a strong position in New Zealand’s resource recovery sector. The company supports customers with waste audits and Toitū-verified diversion reporting, helping organisations understand where their waste is going and how they can improve. It also plays an important role in diverting construction and demolition waste from landfill, one of the major opportunities for improving resource efficiency in Aotearoa New Zealand. Building a framework for progress As Green Gorilla’s impact grew, the business saw an opportunity to bring its sustainability work together in a clearer way. The company already had strong activity underway across waste diversion, resource recovery, low-emissions operations, workforce development, health and safety, community support and customer reporting. What it needed was a framework that connected this work, reflected its purpose and helped customers, staff and partners understand where the company was heading. Green Gorilla partnered with sustainability firm thinkstep-anz to develop a sustainability strategy framework that could guide decisions, support reporting and communicate progress without overclaiming. The work combined sustainability strategy, copy writing and design, with Green Gorilla’s practical action at the centre. The process began with a review of Green Gorilla’s existing sustainability […]

Manufacturing’s automation moment is here – now comes the workforce challenge

Jo Verry, Senior Key Account Manager at industry training organisation, Competenz You lock up your warehouse at night, switch off the lights and press play on an autonomous drone. By morning, it has flown the aisles, scanned barcodes, completed stocktakes and delivered real-time inventory data before the first staff member arrives. For some manufacturers, that future isn’t coming – it’s already here. Having recently attended the MAKE NZ industry conference at the engineering and manufacturing show EMEX – alongside spending the past few months visiting manufacturing sites across New Zealand – I’ve had a front-row seat to how quickly technology is evolving. From collaborative robots (co-bots) on factory floors to increasingly sophisticated AI and automated systems in warehousing and distribution, one message came through consistently: the biggest shift isn’t machines replacing people. It’s that the people alongside those machines now need different skills. There is still a persistent narrative that technology equals job losses. But across manufacturing floors, warehouses and engineering workshops, the reality looks different. Across many manufacturing environments, technology is changing jobs faster than it is removing them. Take robotic welding. A robot may handle repetitive work, but it still needs someone who understands welding quality, tolerances, and outcomes. Visit a distribution centre, and you’ll see technology moving stock, but humans still analysing outputs, monitoring systems and solving problems when things go wrong. Are the robots ready to fly solo? Recently, I visited a manufacturer trialling a machine designed to automatically pick up boxes, stack pallets and shrink-wrap them. Impressive? Absolutely. Faster than the person standing next to it? Not even close. The lesson is simple: technology still needs people. Technology is not a procurement decision – it’s a workforce project The strongest manufacturing investments happen when conversations about technology and workforce capability start early. If new technology, […]

Why the most valuable asset in your plant isn’t on the balance sheet

-Mike Warmington, Director, Platform 1 As the owner you can be the most valuable asset in the business. Manufacturing companies focus on equipment, inventory, capacity, and productivity. All are very important to success, however what is often overlooked is that a key asset is the systemisation and transferability of the owner’s knowledge, relationships, decision-making, and leadership. Most manufacturing businesses have two production systems: The visible system Equipment ERP systems Production schedules Inventory The invisible system Supplier relationships Customer trust IP Staff loyalty Problem-solving experience The invisible asset often lives predominantly inside the owners head. Don’t become the operating system of your business. Many owners go to their trusted accountant and focus mainly on getting their books in order prior to an exit. Of course that is important, however generally a lot less focus goes into preparing for transfer of relationships, authority, decision-making, customer ownership and leadership. A transfer-ready business attracts interested people regardless of what your proposed method of exit is. The more indispensable the owner becomes, the harder succession becomes. The best manufacturing exits aren’t always achieved by an immediate exit either. Some owners exit gradually ,bring in future leadership and transfer over time to a structured plan. The result is often higher value and greater legacy preservation. Whatever option you decide on, there is a difference between owning your business and being your business if you want to create long term value. Email:mikewarmington@platform1.co.nz

Pressure equipment in practice – Pressure Equipment Workshop 2026

4th September 2026 – Novotel Lakeside, Rotorua New Zealand’s manufacturing and engineering sectors are operating in a period of rapid change, where productivity, compliance, skills, and technology are all moving at once. For many businesses, the challenge is not simply keeping pace, but making sound decisions in an environment where expectations continue to rise, the margin for error is narrow and budgets are tight. Within the pressure equipment sector, that challenge is sharpened further by a demanding regulatory environment, where operators and engineers must balance practical performance, safety, and assurance while adapting to evolving expectations. Against that backdrop, the pressure equipment industry will gather in Rotorua on 4 September for this year’s conference, bringing together practitioners, speakers, and industry leaders to explore the issues shaping the sector now and into the future. The workshop is designed as a place for the industry to come together to exchange ideas, test assumptions, and compare notes on the realities of pressure equipment design, operation, inspection, and regulation. That is what gives the event its value: not just the formal presentations, but the collective knowledge that emerges when people working in the same field share experience openly. Judgement and codes The keynote, Where Codes End and Judgement Begins, captures the central idea running through the programme. Dr. Charles “Chuck” Becht IV draws on more than four decades of engineering practice to reflect on the limits of codes and standards, and the importance of professional judgement where the written rules do not provide a complete answer. That is a particularly relevant message for a sector like pressure equipment, where compliance is essential but rarely sufficient on its own. Real plants, real operating conditions, and real defects often demand interpretation, experience, and a system-level view, and Dr. Becht will present a range of case studies from his […]

Connecting the dots

David Altena has 30 years of tech industry experience and is a founding director of The Better SMB Limited. david@altena.solutions Rob Bull, Director of the New Zealand Lean Academy rob@nzla.nz Connecting The Dots Everyone’s busy, capable and pulling in different directions Most manufacturers know what they need to do, but they’re doing it in pieces, with strategy, people and operations moving separately instead of together. The result is a growing list of sensible initiatives, moving in different directions and quietly cancelling each other out. We have explored several of the pressures facing New Zealand manufacturers – the cost of doing nothing, the investment gap many businesses create for themselves and the disciplines that separate the top performers from the rest. For some, that may have translated into a familiar feeling: we know what could be better here. The harder question is this: are those improvements connected inside your business, or are they sitting in different conversations, owned by different people, progressing at different speeds? Because when effort isn’t aligned, even good decisions create friction. The business stays busy, capable people work hard – and progress stalls. Direction without traction Most manufacturers have a strategy of some sort, even if it lives largely in the owner’s head. There is usually a clear sense of where to take the business, what needs to change and what success should look like. The problem is not ambition. It’s translation. Strategy often moves in one direction, while day‑to‑day decisions move in another. It doesn’t change what gets reviewed weekly, what leaders spend their time on, or what behaviours are rewarded or tolerated. The strategic intent exists, but it never reaches the work. When that happens, people make sensible decisions based on local priorities, not enterprise direction. No one […]

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