Market conditions still a challenge
The latest New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association (NZMEA) Survey of Business Conditions completed during November 2015, shows total sales in October 2015 decreased 5.70% (year on year export sales decreased by 8.25% with domestic sales decreasing 0.88%) on October 2014. The NZMEA survey sample this month covered NZ$366m in […]
New BusinessNZ Chief Executive
The BusinessNZ Council has appointed Kirk Hope as new Chief Executive of BusinessNZ. Mr Hope is currently Chief Executive of the NZ Bankers’ Association. A barrister and solicitor, he was formerly Executive Director of the Financial Services Federation and a member of the Commercial and Business Law Committee of the […]
RMA changes could do some good
BusinessNZ says draft legislation to amend the Resource Management Act is worthwhile. Chief Executive Phil O’Reilly says business is disappointed that the political landscape has made it impossible to change the Act substantively to make it more fit for its purpose of promoting sustainable development. But he says the changes […]
Offshore investment vital for manufacturing industries
“A breath of fresh air in the business landscape and important new momentum for the economy to benefit every New Zealander”. That’s the description two partners of DLA Piper New Zealand gave to the Government’s investment chapter of the Business Growth Agenda, launched mid month. “The message was clear and […]
Find your 8 hidden marketing assets to attract your ideal target audience
By digging for the gold right under your nose, you can tap into your full business potential. David Frank specialises in communications for engineering, technology, and manufacturing firms – both external (marketing) and internal (technical documentation). He uses interviewing to tap into the ‘heartbeat’ of his client’s target audience, using […]
NZ gluten-free boom prompts new testing service
New Zealand’s largest privately owned testing laboratory, Hill Laboratories, is offering a gluten testing service with the fastest turnaround-time in the Country. The company has introduced the service in response to the rapid increase in consumer demand for gluten free products, which according to Coeliac New Zealand Incorporated, is increasing […]
Reporoa feed company taking on the world
After exporting its equine feed products into Asia for many years, Reporoa-based company Fiber Fresh has also now launched its calf feed products into the international marketplace. Fiber Fresh is New Zealand’s largest animal nutrition export company, specialising in high nutritional equine and calf feed products. It celebrated 30 years […]
Steel Industry in Crisis
by Gary Hook, CEO Metals New Zealand China steel chief says demand ‘evaporating at unprecedented speed’. If anyone were in any doubt about the magnitude of the crisis facing the world’s largest steel industry, listening to Zhu Jimin would put them right. Demand is collapsing along with prices, banks are […]
Revolutionary wind energy conversion system
The novel cross-axis-wind-turbine (CAWT) is a new type of wind turbine that has the capability to extract energy from multi-directional wind that is commonly found in urban areas due to the interaction of airflows between high-rise buildings. Its ability to operate in areas with complex wind pattern and low wind […]
Offshore boost
New Zealand’s manufacturing sector continued its expansionary path for October, according to the latest BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI). The seasonally adjusted PMI for October was 53.3 (a PMI reading above 50.0 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining). Although this was […]
Profits lift for New Zealand’s biggest steel distributor
Steel & Tube, New Zealand’s biggest steel distributor, posted sales of $502 million for the year ending June 2015, with after-tax profits up by 20% to $21.4 million. “It’s been a significant year for S&T,” CEO Dave Taylor told shareholders at the Company’s Annual Meeting. “We have focused our efforts […]
Business addressing climate change
Climate change is moving up the agenda for New Zealand businesses, according to a survey released by BusinessNZ. Businesses that make up 36 percent of New Zealand’s private sector GDP participated in the BusinessNZ Climate Change Survey. The survey shows that 61 percent of those surveyed have introduced initiatives to […]
Innovation Stalled
Why the Crown Research Shake-Up is at least a 2-Year Setback In a year where New Zealand’s productivity crisis is finally getting some airtime, the government has managed to stall one of our most important levers for change: innovation. The Crown Research Institute (CRI) reforms were supposed to turbocharge commercialisation and collaboration. Instead, we’ve ended up with a bureaucratic limbo. Restructuring science funding in theory might make sense, but not if it pulls the handbrake on actual innovation for two years while the dust settles. The timing couldn’t be worse. David Altana, Head of Growth & Partnerships at SmartSpace.ai & Co-Founder & Host of The Better SMB Podcast. david@altena.solutions While other nations are doubling down on R&D to fuel economic transformation, New Zealand is in danger of drifting further into irrelevance. We’re already ten years behind our OECD peers on technology adoption. Now, with innovation policy in flux, the few Kiwi companies ready to lead from the front are left waiting for clarity, funding and alignment. Rob Bull, Director of the New Zealand Lean Academy. rob@nzla.nz To understand why this matters, we need to be clear on the difference between innovation, R&D and technology adoption. Innovation is about exploring better ways to lift organisational performance. That a bold business model shift, or solving a customer problem in a novel way. It’s the spark that drives progress. R&D is what fuels that spark. It’s the deliberate investment of time, moneyand expertise to develop the ideas that underpin innovation. It can live inside universities, CRIs, or businesses themselves, but without it, our ideas run shallow. Technology adoption is how we bring it all to life. It’s the moment we take those R&D outcomes or global innovations and embed them into how we actually work. This is where New Zealand, historically, has […]