Air New Zealand has today revealed a new Economy seat design at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg to be introduced on the airline’s Airbus A320/A321neo (new engine option) fleet.
The airline has worked with UK aerospace seating company Acro Aircraft Seating on the slim-line design, a key feature of which is wider seats. The window and aisle seats will be one centimetre wider than those on the airline’s current international Airbus fleet, with the middle seat three centimetres wider ensuring a better sense of personal space across the row.
The design also features a new seat cover developed in conjunction with New Zealand company Flight Interiors which customer testing has demonstrated delivers superior comfort levels for longer.
Air New Zealand General Manager Customer Experience Anita Hawthorne says the design of the new seat was customer-led with the airline and Acro keen to address key areas of customer feedback and further improve the inflight experience.
“The slightly wider middle seat helps balance out the fact that window and aisle seat customers enjoy a greater sense of space. We currently have many customers who state a preference for window or aisle seats and it’s possible the new design may see the middle seat get a boost in popularity.
“We have a long history of innovating and of thinking outside the box for solutions so we were fortunate to work alongside a like-minded partner such as Acro. We believe what we’ve co-designed is not only practical from an operational perspective but importantly a more comfortable and spacious experience for our customers,” says Ms Hawthorne.
Acro Chief Executive Officer Chris Brady says the seat attracted plenty of attention at the Aircraft Interiors Expo when it was unveiled today.
“To reveal the new seat at this event, which showcases all the very latest innovations, technologies and products for cabin interiors was hugely exciting and piqued a lot of interest in the new product from other airlines and the wider industry alike,” Mr Brady says.
Air New Zealand has 13 Airbus A320neo aircraft on order to replace its current A320 fleet. The airline will receive a combination of A320neo and A321neo.
| An Air New Zealand release || April 05, 2017 |||
Corrections has signed up its 100th employer to offer prisoners jobs in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Waste Management today, says Corrections Minister Louise Upston.
The partnership will see Waste Management work with Corrections and offer prisoners jobs when they are released, including drivers, administration, computer operator, runners, landfill operators, general operators, labourers, diesel mechanics and call centre roles.
“It’s great to have Waste Management on board,” says Ms Upston. “There is huge potential in this partnership and I look forward to seeing it to develop and offer more employment opportunities for prisoners on release.
“Through these partnerships, Corrections is providing employers with motivated and skilled workers for a wide range of meaningful jobs.”
“We know that having stable employment plays a huge role in reducing the likelihood of reoffending once someone leaves prison. That is good for the prisoner, their whanau and the communities they return to.”
Alongside Waste Management, other employers that have signed MoUs with Corrections include Global Bus and Horticulture NZ to provide career training and sustainable employment.
Corrections delivers a wide range of education and employment training programmes in prisons including horticulture, manufacturing, construction, painting and hospitality. In the last financial year, around 9000 offenders were engaged in employment-related activities.
“The training and rehabilitation programmes in prison ensure that these people are well-equipped with quality, employable skills that are widely recognised by employers,” says Ms Upston.
“Many prisoners have limited work experience before going to prison and it’s fantastic to see these programmes making a real difference and helping get them successfully placed into employment.”
Corrections has its own recruitment service to connect offenders with meaningful jobs once they are released from prison. Over the past five months, around 300 people with convictions have been placed into long-term, sustainable jobs.
Corrections has also run an Employment Support Service over the last three years which provides job placement and in-work support for prisoners due for release and for offenders on community sentences. To date the programme has helped 137 offenders find jobs.
To support Corrections’ employment partnerships, Ms Upston will be hosting employer breakfasts in Hamilton, Christchurch and Wellington over the next few months. Employers will be invited to come and learn more about partnering with Corrections to provide jobs for offenders.
| A Beehive release || April 04, 2017 |||
Water may cover the majority of the planet's surface, but thanks to a huge helping of salt, it's hard to tap into as a source of drinking water. Once again, graphene could come to the rescue. Researchers at the University of Manchester have developed a graphene-oxide membrane with a scalable, uniform pore size that can filter out even the smallest salts, without affecting the flow of water too much.
Desalination plants already use a variety of techniques to produce safe drinking water, including shocking the salt and water into separating, using salt-attracting membranes, or harnessing the power of ocean waves to purify water and pump it back to shore. Graphene has already lent a hand before, too, acting like a big sponge that sits on the water's surface, drawing water up through it and cleaning it in the process.
The wonder material has also been put to work as a water filtering membrane that performed well at removing some particles, organic molecules and salts, but according to the Manchester researchers, it couldn't catch the smallest common salt ions. That's thanks to the fact that these membranes tend to swell up when submerged in water, which messes with the spacing between the graphene-oxide layers and lets the salt molecules slip through with the water.
The Manchester researchers claim they've found a way to limit how much the membranes swell in water, by physically confining the material. That allows them to precisely tune the size of the pores, and keep out the unwanted salts, particles and molecules by simply making them smaller than the diameter of the common salt ions. The team reports that 97 percent of sodium chloride ions are rejected by the membrane, while still allowing water to flow through fairly freely.
Scalability is one of the big factors in how viable the method is, and the researchers believe that their graphene-oxide membrane could comfortably scale both up and down. Upwards, and the method could help improve the efficiency of desalination plants. Scaling down, the filters themselves could be used as inexpensive water purifiers for developing countries with limited access to clean water or large-scale desalination plants.
"Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology," says Professor Rahul Nair, co-author of the study. "This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime. We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sieve sizes."
Longer term, the team points out that the basic idea of tuning the pore sizes to filter out specific ions could be applied to different membranes, for different purposes.
"The developed membranes are not only useful for desalination, but the atomic scale tunability of the pore size also opens new opportunity to fabricate membranes with on-demand filtration capable of filtering out ions according to their sizes," says Jijo Abraham, co-lead author of the study.
| The research was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. \ April 5, 2017 |||
Major Chinese banks operating in New Zealand continued to make significant inroads last year, with a strong rise in overall assets across all three as they look to cash in on the growing trade ties between the two nations.
Trade between China and New Zealand has tripled to $23 billion since the free trade agreement between the two nations came into force in 2008.
The money flow looks set to continue after New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English and China Premier Li Keqiang last week signed off a series of co-operation deals spanning trade, customs, travel and climate change and agreed official talks to upgrade the existing FTA between the nations will start on April 25.
However, while all three banks have primarily targeted corporate clients since setting up shop here, they are also gradually increasing their residential mortgage portfolios, benefiting from a massive housing boom.
China Construction Bank of New Zealand reported total assets of $887.8 million in the year to December 31, up from $401.9m in the prior year.
It also reported a net profit of $1.8m, up from a net loss of $4.7m in the prior year.
The bank significantly increased its residential mortgage portfolio, which jumped to $381.6m versus $72m in the prior year. Its corporate loan portfolio was $363.6m versus $235m in the year to December 31, 2015.
Bank of China New Zealand reported total assets of $514.5m, up from $208.4m in the prior 12 months.
BOC NZ set up shop in November 2014. Corporate loans jumped to $309.4m from $144.5m. It also turned to the housing market with loans of $33.8m at the balance date versus none in the prior year.
Finally, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (NZ) also made a stronger foray into the residential market, with its residential loan portfolio increasing to $172.9m versus $102.4m in the prior year. Its corporate exposure jumped from $278.6m to $531.4m.
| An NZNewsWire release | April 03, 2017 |||
ji Fibre Solutions (OjiFS) has unveiled upgraded and expanded facilities at its Penrose paper bag manufacturing plant. The $30 million capital investment lifts production capacity and provides a world- class food safety environment that aims to future proof the business and continue to set the global standard in dairy bag production.
The new facilities were officially opened on Friday by the Minister for Economic Development, Hon Simon Bridges.
OjiFS chief executive Jon Ryder said the event marks one of the first milestones in an exciting new chapter in the company’s history.
“The decision to invest $30 million into this site was made in February 2015, within months of the purchase of our business (formerly CHH Pulp, Paper and Packaging) by Oji Holdings and Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) in November 2014. It is a strong sign of Oji’s commitment to New Zealand and our intent to grow the Oji Fibre Solutions business in NZ and Australia.”
Dr Ryder said the business has traditionally been a supplier of commodity products – the Penrose investment reflects its transition to become more of a solutions company for its customers.
“We are determined to develop a portfolio of value added products that address the sectors we support; in this case dairy, flour and sugar. Our investment provides a world- class food safety environment which is vital to ensure the integrity of the supply chain,” he said.
The investment project has seen the extension of the plant’s existing hygiene hall and upgrade of a conversion line that produces multi-walled bags for dairy and food powder packaging. It entailed upgrading of all aspects of critical hygiene, installation of state of the art bag-making equipment and construction of an additional 3,000m2 of onsite warehousing and associated facilities.
Purpose built and equipped to meet the Ministry of Primary Industries’ guidelines for the design and construction of dairy facilities, the facilities also comply with stringent customer engineering standards for food safety. The new conversion line produces 48 million 25kg dairy and food powder bags per year, bringing total production to around 100 million bags per annum.
Oji Fibre Solutions is a leading supplier of multi-ply paper bags in New Zealand. In addition to supplying the dairy and food bag market, its Penrose business also produces tens of millions of paper bags for a diverse range of market segments including cement, vegetables and food products. Its current market is primarily domestic however the business has rapidly growing export volumes to Australia, the Pacific Islands and South America. Key customers include major dairy processing companies in New Zealand, Australia and South America along with other large scale food product manufacturers.
This follows on from Oji Holdings Corporation (Oji Holdings), through its New Zealand subsidiary, Oji Fibre Solutions (OjiFS), investing A$72 million in a new corrugated box manufacturing facility in Queensland.
| An Oji Fibre Solutions releas || April 03, 2017 |||
New Zealand’s construction and building sector needs more recruits. The Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation (BCITO) is launching a major campaign next week to attract new apprentices and demonstrate the possibilities of a career in the trades.
Kicking off on 10 April in Auckland, the Not Your Average Tradie Road Trip will see a group of talented BCITO apprentices spending four weeks visiting different regions, helping out community organisations, charities, and schools with building woes.
“This is a fantastic opportunity to show people what a career in the trades offers, while also supporting our local communities,” says BCITO Chief Executive Warwick Quinn.
“New Zealand is in the midst of a skills shortage,” says Quinn. “Our community groups, schools and charities are feeling this too – with many buildings desperately in need of maintenance and updating.
“With skills in high demand, the cost of construction can be out of reach for many community organisations. At BCITO we have a group of exceptionally skilled apprentices across multiple trades in the industry and this is a wonderful opportunity to showcase a range of careers in construction while also giving something back to communities.”
After leaving Auckland, the road trip will visit Tauranga, New Plymouth and Wanaka before heading back up to Auckland.
The tradies will be carrying out work at a number of locations including dedicated spaces for at-risk youth, a health and social services provider, a surf club, schools and will also be working with Habitat for Humanity.
“Everybody deserves a decent place to live”, says Habitat for Humanity New Zealand Executive Director Conrad LaPointe. “However, in New Zealand, and especially in Auckland, this is becoming increasingly hard.”
“Because of demand, the cost of labour and materials are rising and many people are finding themselves needing some extra help – that’s where we come in,” says LaPointe.
“A simple, decent home is the foundation for a better life. We know the work we do makes a real difference. We are struggling to keep up with the demand for our services and it is wonderful to have some BCITO apprentices helping us out with our latest project.”
“Thousands more apprentices are needed to fill the demand in the building sector,” says Quinn. “According to Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment forecasts, one in five new jobs created between 2016 and 2019 will be in construction.
“These numbers show the building and construction sector is an excellent career option,” says Quinn.
“Today, many young New Zealanders expect more from their chosen career. They are looking for job security and for work with a purpose, something that offers a social good. The trades are a fantastic example of this – we build the environments our communities live, work, and play in, we are looking forward to making a difference on the road trip.”
Follow the action at BCITO.TV
| A BCITO releaese || April 03, 2017 |||
The 2017 PrefabNZ CoLab conference day took place at AUT in central Auckland on Tuesday 21 March. Amelia Melbourne-Hayward reports back.
The 2017 CoLab conference kicked off rather differently to previous years, with the launch of PrefabNZ’s new ‘logs4jobs’ initiative, which aims to encourage women to enter the construction industry and to help fill the skilled worker shortage we are currently battling in New Zealand. Warren Quinn, chief executive of BCITO, explained that only 237 women are being trained with the company at present – this equals a measly 2.35 per cent of trainees in construction.
Although the statistics may be grim, the logs4jobs video, which was produced in collaboration with Carter Holt Harvey Woodproducts, BCITO and CareersNZ, was one of positivity, with the goals of raising awareness of work opportunities, normalising females in the manufacturing, design and construction industries and demonstrating the realities about these roles. It is a much-needed and commendable call to action.
CoLab’s first international keynote speaker was Helena Lidelöw of Lindbäcks and the University of Luleå, Sweden, who gave a thorough and interesting presentation about the history and current state of design and construction in her home country, stating that “after the much-criticised Million Homes Programme, we had a shift from an architect-driven to a contractor-driven industry. The architect’s role in Sweden is now purely for aesthetics”.Tim Porter (co-chair, PrefabNZ Board) with keynote speaker Helena Lidelöw of Lindbäcks and the University of Luleå, Sweden. Image: courtesy PrefabNZ
Continue to read full article on ArchitectureNow released April 03, 2017 |||
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