KPMG has analysed trends in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from 2013 to 2015, based on Overseas Investment Office (OIO) approvals for the past three years. The latest analysis shows that New Zealand’s strongly-growing economy is providing an attractive environment for FDI.
Key findings on the analysis include:
Understanding the source and focus of FDI provides insight into how New Zealand connects to the world. This is the third FDI report published by KPMG and in response to market demand we have extended this analysis to include insights into investment by sector and by country.
A KPMG release
KPMG has analysed trends in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from 2013 to 2015, based on Overseas Investment Office (OIO) approvals for the past three years. The latest analysis shows that New Zealand’s strongly-growing economy is providing an attractive environment for FDI.
Key findings on the analysis include:
Understanding the source and focus of FDI provides insight into how New Zealand connects to the world. This is the third FDI report published by KPMG and in response to market demand we have extended this analysis to include insights into investment by sector and by country.
A KPMG release
Sudden disappearance of New Zealand civil engineering institution led to standards decline claims correspondent
The rush to bury the reality and the memory of the old New Zealand Ministry of Works had a singular and tangible outcome. This was the standards vacuum. The subsequent leaky building problem and the modern buildings which collapsed due to earthquakes in Christchurch are the result of this. This state of affairs was referred to, but not at the length it deserved by your original correspondent who correctly described the New Zealand “way” in which entities once believed to be of value are suddenly swept away and in this process are deemed in every way to be bad. This is an impression that as your original correspondent observed then proceeds to compound on itself over the years.The Ministry of Works’ meticulously enforced quality standards should have been carefully preserved. Instead what happened was that the dissolution of the old Ministry of Works introduced a facet of the law of unintended consequence. This took the form of the disappearance of New Zealand’s high level construction standards which if not actually enforced by the Ministry served as a yardstick for the entire sector whether Ministry or not.
It was now that was created the standards vacuum situation which I have just described. Now allow me to take a step backwards. A problem in New Zealand construction has long been for people to represent themselves as doing work that they are not in fact institutionally qualified to do. This is unavoidable in a new country and one in which the demand for construction people will often outweigh the supply of them. These “chancers” as we used to call them are often valuable just because they are self-taught and often work hard to overcome their lack of officially sanctioned training. The problem starts though when such people assume professional roles in which test and measurement qualifications of an institutional type are by definition essential.In the aftermath of the disappearance of the old Ministry of Works so there began also to disappear the inspectorates and their cadres of highly qualified people who themselves had been tested practically and theoretically. The gnawing away of the old Ministry standards was by now well under way and has been compounded by the failure of the professional societies to claim responsibility for the demonstrable failure of their own authorised practitioners.Yours faithfullyAlan GrimbleAuckland
Cubic Defence New Zealand ranked six among ‘Ten Companies to Watch’ by Technology Investment Network
SAN DIEGO – November 1, 2016 – Cubic Global Defense (CGD), a business unit of Cubic Corporation (NYSE: CUB), today announced that Cubic Defence New Zealand (CDNZ) was named one of ‘Ten Companies to Watch’ with the largest revenue growth in 2016 by Technology Investment Network (TIN), the publisher of the TIN100 Report in New Zealand. The TIN100 Report tracks the performance of New Zealand’s 200 largest technology exporters in the fields of high-tech manufacturing, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and biotechnology.
The TIN100 ‘Ten Companies to Watch’ recognizes companies that achieved the highest dollar value increase in revenue during the past fiscal year as well as a minimum growth of five percent. CDNZ reported an annual growth of $29 million NZD from 2015, totaling 2016 revenue of $103 million NZD.
CDNZ develops world-class, customized training solutions that enable defense customers to achieve performance-based training outcomes. The company grew in size by 20 percent and significantly expanded the technical breadth of its training solutions in 2016.
“CDNZ’s strong revenue growth this year reflects our company’s ability to win large and demanding defense customers with innovative solutions of increasing scale and sophistication,” said Eric Stierna, general manager of Cubic Defence New Zealand. “We are proud to be part of New Zealand’s fast growing technology sector and would like to thank Callaghan Innovation for their ongoing support through the R&D Growth Grant.”
The TIN100 is an industry report sponsored by Callaghan Innovation, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, EY and AJ Park. The TIN100 Report is a critical reference for benchmarking the performance of New Zealand’s 200 largest globally focused technology companies. The twelfth edition of the TIN100 Report is now available at www.tin100.com and contains exclusive trend data and content showcasing New Zealand’s top ten and most promising companies in various categories.
A Cubic release
Kiwi hi-tech companies are staying in the start-up stage for too long, the recently released Market Measures study shows.
Conducted by marketing advisory firms Concentrate and Swaytech, and sponsored by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, the annual Market Measures survey drew data from over 300 New Zealand-based technology companies on their approach to marketing and selling their products overseas.
“Tech is New Zealand’s most exciting industry, but commentators often underestimate the huge challenge of marketing and selling our innovations offshore”, says Owen Scott, Managing Director of Concentrate.
“Our tech companies are developing world class innovations, but too few of them realise their potential as they struggle to cost-effectively scale their sales activity,” says Scott.
Sharon-May McCrostie, Customer Manager at NZTE, says: “We’re seeing more Kiwi hi-tech companies executing competitive and truly innovative strategies and achieving game-changing results. But as the Market Measures study suggests, we still see companies staying in start-up mode for too long. We urge companies going offshore to relentlessly focus and invest in execution to really bring benefits to themselves and to New Zealand and grow bigger, better and faster.”
The Market Measures 2016 report found that while 60% of the companies in the survey were over 10 years old, 35% had annual revenues of less than $1 million and only 2% generated more than $50 million in turnover.
“New Zealand’s hi-tech industry is a few large companies and a long tail of small businesses. The challenge for the small firms is extracting themselves from the long tail of hi-tech exporters by finding cost-effective ways to achieve substantial growth,” says Bob Pinchin, Director of Swaytech.
According to Scott, if hi-tech companies are to mature faster, they need to take a more strategic approach to marketing and sales.
“To break out of the long tail trap, companies need to follow a three step approach. First they have to . . .
Steven Adams says his first big purchase after signing a 140 million dollar contract extension was a new phone. The 23-year-old center yesterday put pen to paper to stay on with his NBA team the Oklahoma City Thunder for another four years.However Adams revealed the final days of negotiation were stressful, for his agent in particular, after he dropped his cellphone in an ice-bath.
"I dropped my phone in the cold tub and it didn't work for like the past three days and stuff (contract negotiations) was going on.
"My agent was trying to contact me and I was like 'I can't, I'm sorry, I just don't have a phone' so that was my purchase yesterday.
"(It's) quite a nice phone."
MINNEAPOLIS, MN (Nov. 1, 2016) – HighJump, a global provider of supply chain network solutions, announced today that Auckland, New Zealand-headquartered Big Chill Distribution has selected HighJump’s Enterprise third party logistics solution and the associated Pulse data mining and analysis tool to manage the company’s new temperature controlled distribution center.
Big Chill began operations in 1996 with a single truck, operating between Auckland and the seaside community of Tauranga, on North Island’s east coast. Currently, the firm provides express delivery of chilled and frozen food products throughout New Zealand with a fleet of some 190 line haul and metro trucks and a network of nine regional depots strategically situated on both North and South Islands. Primarily cross-docking hubs, each of these depots also provides a limited amount of chilled and frozen storage capacity.The new 45,000 square meter Auckland facility is projected to open in early 2017 with 2,000 chilled and 2,200 frozen pallet spaces, with the HighJump software serving as the logistics management platform. The HighJump software will provide Big Chill with precise detailed information on customers’ product from the time it is logged into the facility, throughout its time in storage and through the picking and outbound staging and loading processes.
Big Chill selected the HighJump solution based on its outstanding richness of functionality, its scalability and its third party logistics/customer facing approach.“We were looking for a 3PL-focused warehouse management solution with rich, flexible functionality that could accommodate the varied and unique needs of multiple potential customers,” said Scott Anderson, the company’s national supply chain manager. “Our requirements mandated a well-established, best practice WMS solution as well as a customer-focused alerts/communication management portal.
Key elements in the search included superior inventory control and traceability as well as in-storage visibility and order management, Anderson said. “Inclusion of the HighJump Pulse module will provide us with flexible and detailed labor productivity and visibility information. Too, we feel confident that HighJump will be able to meet our expectations as we continue to expand both in terms of space and services.”
“With this new high tech facility, Big Chill is branching out from its transportation origins into best practices warehousing,” Anderson said. “After our initial roll-out in Auckland, we will further deploy into our South Island operations in Christchurch.”
“We are honored to be part of Big Chill’s transformative expansion program,” said Joe Couto, chief operating officer of the HighJump Logistics Group. “Our software will play a major role not only in allowing Big Chill to service its existing clientele more effectively and profitably, but will also provide a solid platform on which to base its ambitious expansion plans.”
U.S. trade chief: TPP deal benefits whiskey exportsNASHVILLE, Tenn. • United States Trade Representative Michael Froman walked up to the bar in the tasting room of Nelson's Green Brier Distillery on Friday to tout the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement for Tennessee whiskey makers, auto producers and the country music industry.
Froman said President Barack Obama's administration is pushing for Congress to approve the trade deal before the new president is inaugurated in January. The trade deal has become a focus of the presidential campaign, with both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump criticizing the agreement.
The Obama administration wants Congress to approve the deal before the new president takes over, Froman said.
"Given the uncertainty ahead, I think it's very dangerous to the United States to cede our leadership role in this region to China, let China write the rules of the road and let China have access to these markets at our expense," he said.
Tennessee's whiskey exports were valued at $691 million in 2015, making up 65 percent of all whiskey shipped out of the country. Import duties on spirits of up to 45 percent would be slashed under the agreement between the U.S. and Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
The trade deal would also eliminate tariffs of up to 70 percent for U.S.-made vehicles, 50 percent on engines and 40 percent on poultry, Froman said. It would also establish intellectual property standards that would protect songwriters and musicians.
Economists argue that the benefits of free trade outweigh the costs. Imports cut prices for consumers. And exposure to foreign competition makes American companies and the overall U.S. economy more efficient.
But the growth of China as an economic power has led to doubts among critics who cite cheap labor, government subsidies for exporters, currency manipulation and the theft of U.S. trade secrets.
A Pew Research Center survey of more than 5,000 Americans earlier this month found that 80 percent considered outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries a threat to U.S. workers. And 77 percent pointed to competition from foreign imports.
Froman said that 80 percent of goods imported from the TPP countries are already duty free and that applied tariff is 1.5 percent.
"So if we're going from 1.5 percent to zero, and the rest of the world is going 70 percent to zero, that's a pretty good deal," he said.
Pacific Aerospace will build the five-seat piston-single E-350 Expedition utility aircraft at its Hamilton, New Zealand factory after acquiring the rights to the design from Canada’s Found Aircraft.
The first NZ-built E-350 – which is powered by a 325hp (242kW) Lycoming IO-580 and has a stated range of 750nm with a full load of passengers and bags – is expected to roll out in the middle of 2017.
“The addition of the E-350, including the floatplane and amphibian option, really opens new doors for us in regards to overseas relationships and sales opportunities,” Pacific Aerospace general manager of global markets Mark Crouch said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The floatplane market in particular is a very large but mostly unseen market with a large number of very old aircraft coming to the end of their productive lives,” he said, likely referring to the DHC Beaver.
“The E-350 is ideally placed to offer customers a chance to move up to a modern, state-of-the-art higher performance aircraft that will do all their old aircraft did, and more.”
The E-350 is an improved development of the Found Aircraft FBA-2 Bush Hawk bushplane, which originally entered production in 1967. The E-350 received US FAA certification in 2008 and was marketed as a competitor to the Cessna 206. Only small numbers were built before Found Aircraft was wound up in 2014.
Pacific Aerospace chief executive Damian Camp said the E-350 could potentially be built at the company’s Chinese joint-venture company Beijing Pan Pacific Aerospace Technology 10-hectare manufacturing plant in Changzhou, which opened late last month.
“We identified this as an opportunity to take the E-350 to markets it’s never been, utilising our strong distribution network of regional partners across the globe,” Camp said.
“Once the E-350 is established in China, for which we believe there will be a very strong demand, we have the option of assembling the aircraft in our brand new facility at Changzhou.”
The company presented the first Chinese-assembled example of its P-750 XSTOL utility turboprop at the Changzhou facility’s official opening.
A new book examining the disruptive technologies that will transform the insurance industry predicts constant, real-time changes to risk premiums and the disappearance of the car insurance industry by 2030. Dr Michael Naylor, a senior lecturer in insurance at the Massey Business School, has undertaken a meta-analysis of how a range of technologies will change the industry in the coming decade. His report, ‘A Perfect Storm in Insurance: How to Survive the Looming Waves of Disruptive Technology’ aims to help insurers prepare for a very different future.
“Insurers need to change their view of their business as a provider of insurance products to being a data company with real-time links to customers, specialising in personal services,” Dr Naylor says. “Any organisation that is not a big data house now, or is unable to become one soon, is already a legacy company.”
Dr Naylor’s vision of the future also has many implications for consumers.
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242