Air New Zealand will welcome customers into its significantly larger new-look lounge at Melbourne International Airport from tomorrow.
Located on the ground floor of the airport terminal, the lounge carries an ultra-modern design created in conjunction with award-winning global architectural firm Gensler and Australian based design firm Marsden Collective. The modern design follows what was first seen in the Air New Zealand Sydney International lounge.
The lounge offers five different spaces for close to 250 guests, allowing customers to relax and refresh or get some work done. A self-service food buffet, two self-service drink stations and a barista station are also available.
Air New Zealand General Manager Customer Experience Anita Hawthorne says the airline is committed to improving the customer experience and is proud to be able to offer customers flying out of Melbourne a new lounge space with 50 percent more seating than the previous lounge.
“The airline has been investing heavily in the Australian market and promoting its services through its ‘Better Way to Fly’ campaign starring Dave the goose which encourages Australians to travel Air New Zealand to North and South America.
“It’s also clear Australians love the Air New Zealand products and services after recently taking out the number one spot in AMR’s 2017 Australia Corporate Reputation Index so we look forward to welcoming customers to our new lounge.”
The Air New Zealand Melbourne International Lounge forms part of the airline’s four year $100 million programme to develop its network of lounges and follows the opening of new lounges in Sydney and Brisbane as well as in Auckland, Nadi, Wellington, Queenstown, Hamilton and Invercargill.
| An Air New Zealand release | May 08, 2017 |||
Trade Minister Todd McClay travels to Vietnam today to hold talks with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh to discuss developments for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreements.
“New Zealand and Vietnam are both parties to the TPP Agreement and the RCEP negotiation and we have a mutual commitment to high-quality trade deals that create opportunity for our citizens,” Mr McClay says.
“The Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing region in the world and this presents a huge number of opportunities for our farmers, growers, exporters and our wider economy.”
Vietnam is due to host the APEC trade Minister meeting beginning on the 21st of May, where meetings on both the TPP and RCEP will also take place.
“We appreciate Vietnam’s hosting of APEC and its commitment to trade liberalisation. It has also rapidly grown into an important market for New Zealand exporters,” Mr McClay says.
“Since the ASEAN Australia New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA) came into force in 2009 our two-way trade with Vietnam has more than tripled from $430 Million in 2009 to $1.3 billion last year.
“This visit will be an important opportunity to take stock of what has been achieved and discuss how we can continue to deepen this hugely beneficial relationship for our economies.”
| A Beehive release || May 7, 2017 |||
Dutch inventor of self-healing concrete named finalist for European Inventor Award
Munich/Delft, 21 April 2015 - Buildings and structures made of concrete that can "magically" seal and fully repair cracks caused by tension? What may have seemed a utopian scenario just a few years ago will soon become reality, thanks to the invention of microbiologist Hendrik "Henk" Marius Jonkers (50). His vision: to develop a bionic approach that improves the tensile strength and eco-friendly properties of concrete. The Dutch researcher set out to develop the bio-concrete of the future - with limestone-producing bacteria that can survive in a concrete structure for up to 200 years, and which "awaken" when damage occurs, enabling them to heal the cracks. In Europe, where concrete makes up 70 per cent of infrastructure, Jonkers' ground-breaking innovation promises to reduce the costs of concrete production and maintenance, as well as curb resultant carbon dioxide emissions. For his outstanding invention, Jonkers has been named a finalist for the renowned European Inventor Award of 2015 in the Research category. The 10th edition of the annual award will be presented by the European Patent Office (EPO) at a ceremony on 11 June in Paris.
"Hendrik Jonkers' bacterial concrete extends the life of bridges, streets and tunnels and opens up completely new perspectives for concrete production," said EPO President Benoît Battistelli, announcing the European Inventor Award finalists. "This forward-looking innovation is a successful combination of microbiology and civil engineering - two sciences that are unlikely collaborators at first glance."Jonkers exploits regenerative properties of nature
Henk Jonkers' passion for diving and camping was the spark that ignited his career: it began with studies in marine biology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. After completing his PhD in September 1999, he began to focus his developmental work on the observation of bacterial behaviour. He first experimented with limestone-producing bacteria as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. Self-healing octopus tentacles or plants that create new organisms with offshoots served as inspiration for Jonkers' invention. An expert in bacterial behaviour, he continued his career in 2006 at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Delft University of Technology. Jonkers' research agenda in Delft focused on finding a solution to transfer the self-healing properties of natural organisms to a man-made building material, concrete.Self-healing agents encapsulated for over 200 years
To heal cracks in the concrete, Jonkers chose bacteria (Bacillus pseudofirmus and B. cohnii), that are able to produce limestone on a biological basis. The positive side-effect of this property: the bacteria consume oxygen, which in turn prevents the internal corrosion of reinforced concrete. However, the bacteria do not pose a risk to human health, since they can only survive under the alkaline conditions inside the concrete. Based on these findings, Jonkers and his team of researchers developed three different bacterial concrete mixtures: self-healing concrete, repair mortar, and a liquid repair system. In self-healing concrete, bacterial content is integrated during construction, while the repair mortar and liquid system only come into play when acute damage has occurred on concrete elements. Self-healing concrete is the most complex of the three variants. Bacterial spores are encapsulated within two-to four-millimetre wide clay pellets and added to the cement mix with separate nitrogen, phosphorous and a nutrient agent. This innovative approach ensures that bacteria can remain dormant in the concrete for up to 200 years. Contact with nutrients occurs only if water penetrates into a crack - and not while mixing cement. This variant is well-suited for structures that are exposed to weathering, as well as points that are difficult to access for repair workers. Thus, the need for expensive and complex manual repairs is eliminated.Sustainable prevention method could revolutionise concrete production
In recent years, bacterial concrete was subject to endurance tests under various external conditions on a dedicated testing building in Breda, the Netherlands. Plans are in place to launch the self-healing material on the market this year. Jonkers' invention has the potential to significantly reduce maintenance expenses for bridges, tunnels and retaining walls, which currently cost EUR 4 to 6 billion each year in the EU alone. Jonkers is now working on an alternative bacterial encapsulation technique. Compared to the present particle coating methodology, this technique would make it possible to cut production costs of bacterial concrete by an additional 50 per cent. Whereas production costs for conventional concrete amount to EUR 80 per cubic metre, a cubic metre of self-healing concrete would cost between EUR 85 and EUR 100 with the new encapsulated healing agent. With significantly lower repair and replacement costs over the lifetime of a building, this minimally higher investment would quickly pay itself off for all concrete structures.Additional resources
Read more about the inventorView the patent: EP2247551
Future bio-concrete as a sustainable construction technology
Super-bacteria are the answer: Jonkers' ground-breaking solution is one of many green innovations in the building sector currently under development. Bio-concrete of the future has the potential to lower carbon dioxide emissions released in Europe during construction and modernisation projects, both affordably and sustainably.
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Ξ McClay to hold talks with Vietnamese PM on Trade
Indicates need to distinguish between what is known and what is hoped for
The two newspaper companies always gave the appearance of being confident that they could win over to their way of thinking the Commerce Commission?They made the mistake, so evident now, of believing in their own assumption to the effect that the Commerce Commission would see the merger positively.
What were the contrary signals from the Commission that they missed?The Commerce Commission’s point of view in its rejection of the first draft of the merger proposal turned on several doctrinal, ideological, words that indicated that it was not for turning.
What were these words?Democracy, plurality and above all, diversity.
Why diversity?The loaded word runs through the Commission’s deliberations in a now clearly visible thread. It means that people considerations carry clear priority over any competing considerations in this case those of efficiency, economy of scale and so on.......
Why did the two companies go to the Commerce Commission in the first place? Would it not have been more effective to have simply concocted a new structure with a holding company?The Wellington and Auckland based companies had their hearts set on a single merged New Zealand company with a consolidated balance sheet and all that goes with it such as just one management structure.
Until quite recently the two companies worked closely together with a cooperative news pool and joint advertising sales promotion – why didn’t they just carry on as a de facto cooperative?This cooperative structure began to dissolve when the two newspaper groups came into play during the stock market bubble. The old proprietorial families moved away and were replaced by professional managers.
Where and when did they lose the plot?In their search of their competitive edge they opted for going it alone and thus they acted independently now in terms of their own evolving individual web sites and also in acquisitions. They dissolved their news gathering and dissemination cooperative, the New Zealand Press Association. Also abandoned now were certain geographic areas in which they had long agreed not to compete with one another.
Did they underestimate what the internet was going to do to them?At first the internet looked even promising. There were new personalities, celebrities that people wanted to read about. Covering the internet brought in the coveted younger demographic. Let’s look back. When television arrived in New Zealand the newspapers actually benefitted, and the Sunday papers were now launched to satisfy the interest in the new world of television
What happened with the internet?The internet instead now ushered in the era of disintermediation which is still accelerating all around us. People want to deal direct, sweep away the middle operator, the mainstream media, which had hitherto controlled the gateway to news coverage. You want an event covered?You go to Facebook. You want something known – there’s Twitter. You have an opinion? Then you start a blog. You have a range of points you want to air? Start your own website.
There are also any amount, at least 50, broadcasting channels available now. Plenty of competition you would think?The Commerce Commission took a narrower view of this scene than the newspaper managements jointly appeared to appreciate. The Commerce Commision’s verdict centred on most of the nation’s daily newspapers being held in a single set of corporate hands, and the perception thereof.
The daily newspapers published by the two groups are often considered to say the same thing about the same things anyway?The Commission concerned itself with the perception. In this case the perception of most of the dailies being controlled by just the one proprietor. It was now at the first decision that there was introduced the notion that New Zealand if the merger went through would convey a similar perception as that of China in that the press in China is controlled by just the one entity, the Communist Party. The signal was clear. It was not picked up.
The Commission’s second and seemingly last veto was delivered at the very start of International Free Press Day. Was this symbolic?Perhaps – and just because in this attenuated affair so much can be viewed as turning on symbols and perceptions.
What happens now?The two newspaper groups, the ones based in Auckland and Wellington must wash their minds of further approaches, appeals, to constituted authority including now the judiciary, and they must do so primarily on the grounds of sidestepping any further distractions. The danger of a strategic assumption, in this case that the Commerce Commission would approve the merger, is just that it is so enticing just because it makes the transition from supposition to reality. The wish becomes the fact.
In practical terms, this means....?The two groups will have to rearrange themselves around a new corporate structure and one that stops just short of a unified balance sheet. The daily newspaper business, an extremely marginal one, is riddled with intensive and in-built administration procedures especially on the subscriber and circulation side where there are stop-starts that can only be automated up to a certain point. They must now merge these departments. They must merge too their printeries.
They will have to be more radical than that, given their falling circulations?They will have to adopt a new business model and my feeling is that they will develop a franchise model which has already been experimented with by at least one rural newspaper management buyout. Print is relatively strong in the provinces. A franchise move will allow the two groups to develop their centralised services and will dilute the liability also of their substantial staff contingencies.
What about the hedge funds and such like said to be lurking in the middle distance?The two newspaper groups began to go heavily into play in the 80s bubble and will have been stripped by now of hard asset value i.e. real estate. So they are unlikely to be a target for speculators.
We keep hearing about the Auckland and Wellington-based groups. But what about the third proprietor, the one in Dunedin?The Smith family who control the Otago Daily Times group kept it within the family. They are a force to be reckoned with and in the affair under discussion remain the dog that did not bark. Or, if it did, was not heard by anyone. They remain in an envious competitive situation notably now dominating the high value tourist region centred on Queenstown.
What would you recommend that the two beleaguered would-be North Island-based suitors NOT do?Cut the frequency of any of their dailies to let us say three issues a week. The disruptive force of the internet and everything that came with it was to break the newspaper-reading habit. This custom so dominant until just so recently can only be further disrupted by meddling with the frequency of established daily titles.
One has this impression, somehow, of unfinished business. Was anything held back by any one of the parties involved?The episode was characterised by candour. It was just that the two parties looked at the same thing, the merger scheme, and each saw something that was quite different.
Your full hindsight?The two groups should have pulled back after the first round when the Commission’s viewpoint was made clear. They should have done so issuing high-minded yet truthful communiques about the severity of their position, and their continuing determination to better the lot of the public at large. In the event they appeared resentful and so their task in formulating a virtual amalgamation will be harder than before.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Sunday 7 May 2017 |||