NZ Productivity Organisation

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

Science reform: The missing link in NZ’s manufacturing productivity puzzle ?

The Problem We Have Been Ignoring By Sean Doherty, Manufacturing Commentator | NZ Industry Trends Ask any manufacturer about their biggest constraints and the answers are familiar: energy costs, skilled labour, margin pressure, and global competition from economies with far greater scale. What rarely comes up is New Zealand’s persistent underinvestment in the science and technology that lifts productivity. That gap is real. New Zealand’s total R&D investment sits at around 1.5% of GDP, well below the OECD average of 2.7%, and business investment is under 1%, among the lowest in the developed world. This shortfall is estimated to account for up to a third of our productivity gap. But this isn’t just about how much we spend. It’s also about how well manufacturing and science connect. When that link is weak, research struggles to reach the factory floor and manufacturers miss out on practical solutions. When it works, the gains are clear: better products, improved materials, and performance that carries through to export outcomes and productivity gains. All of this sits against a broader shift. Manufacturing’s share of GDP has halved since 2004, and close to 60% of what remains is concentrated in dairy, meat, food, and timber processing. These sectors matter, but focusing most of our limited science effort there won’t deliver the step change in productivity or living standards we’ll need. At best, it sustains incremental gains in mature industries. If we want a different trajectory, the focus has to shift toward building new capability, not just reinforcing what we already do well. What the 2026 Science Reforms Change The Government’s Science Investment Plan 2026–2036 is the most significant restructure of New Zealand’s research system in more than a decade. It also chooses a clear mission based focus and puts commercial outcomes as key objectives. Seven Crown […]

Strong quarter as manufacturing leads growth

New Zealand’s manufacturing sector was the single biggest driver of economic growth in the March 2026 quarter, growing 1.9 percent and powering the country’s start to 2026, Small Business and Manufacturing Minister Cameron Brewer says. “Manufacturing was the largest contributor to economic growth in the March quarter. That tells you just how much this sector matters to New Zealand,” Mr Brewer says. Statistics New Zealand figures show GDP grew 0.8 percent, with manufacturing up 1.9 percent, led by a 4.0 percent lift in transport equipment, machinery and equipment manufacturing. “That growth is being driven by world-leading firms like Dawn Aerospace and Rocket Lab, medtech manufacturers like Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, and the specialist firms building the components that go into them,” Mr Brewer says. “This is exactly what I’ve been seeing on the factory floor around the country: hard-working, innovative Kiwis making world-beating products, lifting productivity and pushing into new markets. Manufacturing contributes around 8 percent of GDP and employs more than 220,000 people. “Our Manufacturing Productivity Advisory Group, who I meet with regularly, tell me forward orders are strong. They’re a great example of industry and government working together, as is the outstanding work Advancing Manufacturing Aotearoa is doing to champion the sector,” Mr Brewer says. “Our priority is to back manufacturers to invest and grow. That’s what Investment Boost is designed to do, letting businesses deduct a chunk of new capital investment upfront so they can buy the machinery and equipment that lifts productivity, exactly the kind of activity we’re seeing in this data. “When manufacturing grows, the whole economy benefits. This is all part of the Government’s plan to fix the basics and build the future, with a sector that’s leading New Zealand’s recovery.”

Sustainability: Digital product passports and the MCI – a practical guide for manufacturers

From June issue, NZ Manufacturer magazine Manufacturers are being asked to answer harder questions about their products: What are they made from? Where did the materials come from? Can they be repaired, reused or recycled? And can those claims be verified? Digital product passports (DPPs) are emerging as a practical answer. They give each product a digital record that can travel with it through the value chain, making trusted information easier to share, update and use. For manufacturers, this is becoming a way to prepare for changing regulations, support circular economy goals and make product data more useful for customers, suppliers and recyclers. Manufacturers are also under pressure to prove claims around recycled content, durability and end-of-life recovery. Together, DPPs and the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) can provide a practical way to measure and communicate circularity performance. What is a digital product passport? A digital product passport is a structured digital record that stores and shares information about a product across its life cycle. It can bring together technical specifications, material composition, recycled content, installation and repair manuals, end of use pathways, chemicals of concern, and other product details in one digital thread. Digital product passport information can sit with each product, using a QR code, RFID tag or other digital identifier. It can also be managed across a whole project through systems like Rosella Street, an Australian-built platform that helps manufacturers and project teams collect, manage and report passport data. The idea may sound technical, but the purpose is simple: to give procurement officers, project teams, asset managers, deconstruction crews, recyclers and regulators reliable product information when they need it. As Jim Goddin, thinkstep-anz’s Head of Circular Economy explains, product information is increasingly expected to move with the product itself. Mick Fritschy, Director and Co-founder of enterprise software company […]

Moving a food manufacturing business: Lessons from Old Country Food

From June issue NZ Manufacturer magazine Family-owned Auckland manufacturer Old Country Food is one of New Zealand’s largest Asian food producers, making more than two million steamed buns and about 15 million dumplings annually for supermarkets, hospitality businesses and specialty retailers across the country. Founded more than 35 years ago by immigrants from Hong Kong, the business has evolved through several groups of Asian ownership before CEO Dr Amy Sevao’s family bought into the company in 2015. Its food philosophy reflects that journey. The business originally specialised in Cantonese-style dim sums before northern Chinese expertise refined its dough-making techniques. Taiwanese influences later shaped the product range, while a distinctly Kiwi approach to ingredients and flavour helped transform the business into a modern Asian fusion manufacturer. “When I took over, I brought in Kiwi executive chef Cameron Knox to rethink the recipes,” says Amy. “The goal was to create a distinctly New Zealand flavour profile: cleaner, simpler and more ingredient led. That really became part of our identity.” That innovation-led approach has helped Old Country Food grow despite difficult trading conditions across the food manufacturing sector recently. The company was behind the launch of the world’s first hāngī steamed buns, a Māori and Asian fusion product that sold out nationwide and has just launched a new dumpling range specifically designed for air fryers. In 2025, Old Country Food moved from its premises from Henderson to a customised 800sqm North Shore facility. Amy says the move to a larger, more efficient factory has been central to the company’s next stage of growth, allowing it to streamline operations, reduce costs and double production capacity. Old Country Food has been an EMA Member for nearly two years and the team took a tour of the facility recently. The EMA’s Nicholas Russell sat down with […]

Last month massive for the Manufacturing sector

-Hon. Cameron Brewer, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing I had the opportunity to attend and speak at the Hutt Valley Manufacturing and Innovation Expo, where I saw first-hand the breadth of activity and innovation underway in the region. Following this, visiting EMEX 2026 (Pictured)and speaking directly with exhibitors reinforced a clear message: high value added, innovative manufacturing is happening right across the country. Not just in the main centres, but in places like Bluff, Gisborne and everywhere in between. A particular highlight for me was the second Minister for Manufacturing Awards. It was a great opportunity to celebrate success and recognise the high standards being set across the sector. This year’s finalists and winners showed the innovation and strong execution needed for the sector to stay competitive and grow its $22 billion contribution to the economy. The awards showcased what excellence looks like in practice, with businesses investing in their people, improving processes, and adopting new technologies to lift productivity and performance. One of the new categories this year, the Manufacturing Lifetime and Legacy Award, recognises sustained leadership and impact. Jeff Douglas of Douglas Pharmaceuticals was a highly deserving recipient. Over three decades, he has led the transformation of the business, choosing to anchor high value research and development and specialised manufacturing in New Zealand rather than following the global trend of offshoring. That kind of long-term commitment is exactly what strengthens our manufacturing base. For my part, this Government is committed to backing manufacturing by getting the basics right. That means supporting investment, strengthening skills, enabling innovation and improving access to markets so businesses can grow, compete and succeed. The 2026 Budget, released in late May, delivers a number of measures that will support the sector to remain competitive and resilient in a changing operating environment. These respond […]

1 2 3 4 ›»

News Ticker

NZ Productivity Organisation