Gull NZ will continue business as usual despite Caltex’s acquisition.
Australian fuel retailer Caltex is all set to take over New Zealand fuel retail chain Gull, as part of its plans to expand its retail business.
The deal, worth $325 million, is now expected to be completed by July 3, after it received regulatory approval from the New Zealand Overseas Investment Office.
Under the terms of an agreement entered into in December 2016, the transaction will result in Caltex acquiring Gull’s Mount Maunganui import fuel terminal and retail operating assets.
According to Caltex, the acquisition will optimise its infrastructure position, build trading and shipping capability, grow the supply base and enhance the company’s retail fuel offering through low risk entry into a new market.
As part of the agreed terms of the transaction, Caltex will retain Gull’s brand, management and employees across the current newtwork of 78 Gull stores, and the six currently under construction.
A spokesperson for Gull said the company would be running business as usual, without changes or interruption to service.
Gull sells around 300ML of petrol and diesel fuels per year, representing five per cent of the New Zealand market.
Earlier this year Caltex received approval to purchase Victorian petrol and convenience retailer Milemaker and its 46 operating sites.
The $95 million Milemaker deal was finalised in May, with Caltex entering into long-term leases with an opt-out to 30 years.
Caltex chief executive Julian Segal said the Milemaker and Gull acquisitions were part of the company’s plan to mitigate the impact of losing its 13-year alliance with Woolworths, incurred after BP struck a $1.79 billion deal with the supermarket giant.
Mr Segal said the purchases would help transform Caltex from simply being a transport fuels provider, to grow into a larger convenience retail offering.
| A C-store release || June 27, 2017 |||
The Reserve Bank's commitment to price and financial stability in an uncertain global environment is underlined in the Bank's Statement of Intent (SOI) for 2017-2020.
The Reserve Bank supports economic growth by targeting price stability, promoting a sound and efficient financial system, and meeting the public's currency needs.
The SOI, signed off on 16 June, outlines the nature of the Bank’s work programme over the next three years. The Bank’s nine strategic priorities are framed around three themes: enhancing the Bank’s policy frameworks; continuing to strengthen the Bank’s internal and external engagement; and improving infrastructure and reducing enterprise risk.
"The outlook for New Zealand’s economic growth remains positive, albeit with considerable uncertainty remaining, especially internationally,” Governor Graeme Wheeler said.
"We are working to deepen the Bank’s understanding of the evolving conditions affecting the New Zealand economy and their implications for monetary policy.”
The New Zealand financial system remains sound and continues to perform its functions effectively. The International Monetary Fund’s Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP) review has provided useful input for the on-going development of the Reserve Bank’s prudential regime.
“We will review key elements of the prudential policy framework to better meet the Bank’s soundness and efficiency objective,” Mr Wheeler said.
The Bank will also review the macro-prudential policy framework in line with the five-year requirement set out in the Memorandum of Understanding between the Bank and the Minister of Finance.
“Throughout, the Bank will maintain a high level of engagement with its stakeholders and communicate widely on its policies, their rationale and impacts. The Bank will monitor the effectiveness of engagement through an External Stakeholder Engagement survey in 2018.”
As well as working to complete the implementation of replacements for the Exchange Settlement Account System (ESAS) and the securities settlement and depository system (NZ Clear) – both enhancements to the payments system – the Bank will also be implementing the roadmap for best-practice management of its balance sheet and finances.
The SOI outlines other key projects, including improving the resilience of the Bank’s operations and developing a plan for the future custody and distribution of currency.
"We continually seek to strengthen our performance and we believe these strategic priorities position the Bank well to face the challenges ahead,” Mr Wheeler said.
More information:Read the Statement of Intent for 2017-2020
| A RBNZ release || June 28, 2017 |||
Energy and Resources Minister Judith Collins has today released the New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy 2017-2022.
The Strategy, Unlocking our energy productivity and renewable potential, is a companion to the New Zealand Energy Strategy 2011-2021. It sets the overarching direction for Government and specific actions for the promotion of energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy.
Ms Collins says the goal of the Strategy is for New Zealand to have an energy productive and low emissions economy.
“Through this Strategy, we are encouraging businesses, individuals, and public sector agencies to take actions that will help New Zealand make the most of its clean, renewable energy sources and use energy more productively, which will benefit all New Zealanders,” says Ms Collins.
The Strategy focuses on three priority areas that will provide the most cost-effective opportunities for energy savings and emissions reductions for New Zealand: process heat, transport and electricity.
“Importantly, the targets are measurable, reasonable and practicable by 2022, and the Strategy includes a range of actions to help achieve them including the development of a new process heat action plan.
“The Strategy also works in conjunction with the Energy Innovation Bill and other Government policies and programmes, including the Electric Vehicles Programme.
“It is designed to provide clear direction for the energy sector over the next five years and will move New Zealand towards better energy productivity and lower emissions. I would like to thank all those who took the time to make written submissions on the Strategy earlier this year,” says Ms Collins.
The New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy, Unlocking our energy productivity and renewable potential, is available at www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/energy/energy-strategies
| A Beehive release || June 27, 2017 |||
Early stage technology businesses in the regions can expect an easier pathway to support, thanks to the expansion of Callaghan Innovation’s founder incubators, says Science and Innovation Minister Paul Goldsmith.
Founder incubators are, as the name suggests, centred around a start-up founder, and bring groups of start-ups together, sometimes in a shared working space, to provide services to help with technology and market validation, business planning and investment preparation, among other support.
“Following an extensive tender process, Callaghan Innovation has awarded six providers one and two-year contracts for founder incubator services, beginning 1 July 2017,” Mr Goldsmith says.
The six successful applicants are:
“These successful applicants will significantly increase the extent of regional coverage. Our main cities are well served by multiple incubators and accelerators, but it has been much more difficult for regional start-ups to gain access to the same services.
“This regional expansion recognises that the tech sector’s best ideas do not only come from the main centres, and that improvements such as ultra-fast broadband mean that an export-focussed start-up could be based just about anywhere from Kaitaia to Bluff.”
Waikato-based founder incubator SODA Inc will work with partners to deliver services to start-ups in the Bay of Plenty, Gisborne/Tairawhiti and Hawkes’ Bay. The North Shore based ecentre will work with Northland Inc to deliver services to start-ups from the Te Tai Tokerau region. Wellington’s Creative HQ will look to bring services to several regions in the South Island.
Callaghan Innovation has also finalised contracts for business accelerators for the 2017/18 year, which includes the continuation of contracts for agritech accelerator Sprout, The Icehouse’s Flux, Creative HQ's Lightning Lab, and provision for a number of other sector-specific options in the coming year. Callaghan is also continuing the technology incubator pilot programme with funding confirmed for another two years.
The programmes demonstrate the Government’s commitment to encouraging more technology start-ups in New Zealand as a means to diversifying the economy and increasing productivity.
“These contracts underpin the Government’s commitment to readying the New Zealand economy for the technological disruption to come. Technology businesses create high value jobs, tend to be export-focussed form day one, and ensure that seismic shifts in global consumer demand will not consign our economy to the dustbin.
“I can’t wait to see the new Kiwi businesses that these incubators will help bring to market.”
More information on Callaghan Innovation can be found HERE.
| A Beehive release || June 28, 2017 |||
Mid-2018 opening for Lorneville venison plant
Jobs go as part of Taharoa iron sands mine is shut down
Industry president calls on Government to back cup defence
Statement of Intent outlines RBNZ’s priorities
Petroleum and vehicles lift May 2017 imports - StatsNZ
Major refurbishment for Holiday Inn Auckland Airport Hotel
Business incubators expand to regional NZ
National & Labour Know They Must Ditch Fuddy Duddy Images. But How?
New Zealand’s two major political parties have been revealed in the same day to each have bungled their separate strategies to turn a youthful face to the electorate.
The first was when a very young National Party Member of Parliament did what party officials who sought to block his original selection said he would do which was fall out with the same electoral officials, an incident spiced up by the now seemingly mandatory secret taping sub plot.
The second incident involving the Labour Party followed hard on the heels of the National Party episode.
Nearly 100 electioneering “interns” mainly from the United States were brought to Auckland to assist in campaigning for the Labour Party and along the way to receive lectures from luminaries of the party.
All this at a time when the Labour Party, the equivalent of the US Democrats, was itself campaigning against people from overseas taking the jobs of New Zealanders and in so doing forcing up the price of accommodation.
Fired up by the notion of a Bernie Sanders type of youth crusade the Labour Party Auckland operatives had forgotten to consider that people from the United States insist on a high standard of accommodation in New Zealand.
Indeed, it was the failure of the New Zealand premium hotel sector to provide things that Americans like, such as air conditioning, that was such a problem prior to the arrival of the United States franchise hotels in order to provide its citizens with their home comforts in the South Seas.
The United States interns were less than impressed by the sparseness of their billets.
They were similarly underwhelmed by their failure to meet the high level Labour Party figures who, in the event, seem not to have realised that they were supposed to have met the interns in the first place.
In electioneering strategic terms however both these episodes demonstrated how both the main parties are turning themselves inside out to demonstrate their regard for youth values meaning the youth vote.
The two very recent European elections, the one in the UK and the one in France indicate that their attention is justified.
In election wining terms in New Zealand for Labour and National this means stopping the youth vote sliding into the Green Party.
The Greens embody all the conventional middle class ideological values on things like climate and refugees.
Neither was the mood of the main party strategists improved last month when they surveyed the cover of the house magazine of this voting bloc North & South (pictured) which channeled Vanity Fair with a tableau of idealised Green candidates.
The National and Labour election schemers saw before them the embodiment of the yearnings of this whole sector which is bounded at the younger end by career-friendly university types still in touch with their capping mag days, and at the older end by Guardian Weekly subscribers.
Why?
Because National and Labour share something else too.
It is an indelible musty-fusty sectarian aura redolent of times gone by.
This understanding haunts the high command of both the main parties.
It is the reason the National Party forced on an entirely rural and safe farming electorate a perma-grinning disco type in their early 20s whose short career in the real world was notable for a stint with Big Tobacco.
It is the reason that the Labour Party turned a blind eye on a semi-freelance operation to whip up a US-style youth storm in Auckland.
Result?
Both the two main political parties will now start once again to heed their once powerful local organisations at electorate and divisional level.
These representation committees will tell them that twisting and turning to meet fashionable media-driven yearnings is one thing.
Also that meeting grass roots expectations requires a fixed and determined longer term direction.
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Tuesday 27 June 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