June 27, 2016 - A three-member team of Pacific Islands Trade & Invest (PT&I) NZ and a seasoned trade consultant will accompany nearly two dozen New Zealand businesspeople to Fiji this week as part of a business mission, to build on growing trade and investment between the two countries.
One of the largest ever business missions from New Zealand, the delegation includes a cross-section of SMEs to some of New Zealand’s largest public listed companies. It will travel to Fiji between June 27 and July 1. It comes just weeks after New Zealand Prime Minister John Key visited Suva –the first time an NZ prime minister visited the island nation in nearly a decade.
The PT&I NZ team, led by Trade Commissioner Michael Greenslade, is hosting two workshops of the PT&I Path to Market (P2M) Programme in Nadi and Suva. P2M is an export capability building programme that combines the range of export facilitation services and expertise provided by PT&I to help export ready and export capable businesses enter new export markets. More than 60 countries have registered to attend the workshops.
The content of the workshops is specifically targeted at existing and new exporters giving further insights and overviews of getting products to market.
“The programme is an extended business model that covers six methodical steps that are delivered in partnership by PT&I NZ and an Economic Development Agency in each country,” Greenslade says. The Fiji Export Council is co-hosting the workshops.
“The workshops are the first of a series of steps,” Greenslade explains. “The key to the P2M programme is that it does not end with the workshop. In many ways, it just begins. The overall aim of the workshops and their success would be measured in terms of actual deals made. These are the very definition of sustainability in the context of economic development.”
The steps include a practical assessment of export capability vis-à-vis requirements of the New Zealand market; building a strategic link to the local economic development partner; organising a sales mission to New Zealand; documenting learning from the sales mission; introducing exporters to buyers and distributors in New Zealand; and feedback analyses, quantification of deals and follow up to B2B meetings.
Similar workshops have previously been run in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu which resulted in 21 companies from these countries including five from Fiji attending the Pasifika Festival earlier this year in Auckland. As well as displaying their products at the Pacific region’s largest Polynesian festival, participating export companies had a range of B2B meetings with potential buyers and distributors with several positive outcomes for export sales.
The PT&I team has also chalked out an exhaustive programme of business-to-business interactions, and meetings with senior government and public sector officials. The high profile business mission is led by the New Zealand Fiji Business Council (NZFBC). “To support the objectives of the mission, Fiji’s High Commissioner in New Zealand Filimone Waqabaca is accompanying the delegation – a first for such a mission,” NZFBC Chairman Chander Sen said.
SOURCE: PT&I/PACNEWS