SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.— U.S. industry veteran Paul Lew has been named CEO of the newly restructured Edco cycling company, now based in Arizona.
The historic brand — it was formed in 1867 in Couvet, Switzerland, and began making bike parts in 1902 — was purchased about ten years ago by Rob van Hoek and partners and has been operating as Edco Engineering BV in the Netherlands until recently.
In early summer, a major supplier filed a bankruptcy suit against Edco Engineering BV for failure to meet its financial obligations. This filing was approved by the Netherlands government in August and the company's assets were subsequently purchased by Best Top Industrial. Lew described Best Top as a well-established composite manufacturer in the sporting goods sector, whose corporate offices are in New Zealand. Janey Tiernan, a New Zealander currently based in Sydney, Australia, is the chair for the private equity team behind the new Edco, Lew said.
Lew, best known as owner of Lew Composites and then director of technology and innovation at Reynolds Cycling, became involved with Edco in early 2016. He left Reynolds to set up a U.S.-owned company that licensed the Edco brand from Edco Engineering BV.
Lew's U.S. company was completely separate from the now-bankrupt European company. Although it used many of the same suppliers, it bought and paid for its own inventory and was not in debt to any of them, Lew said. Lew was in charge of product development globally for Edco.
Lew shut down the U.S. operation in May 2017 but remained in touch with the New Zealand executives, who asked him to consult with them as they relaunched Edco after acquiring the brand through the bankruptcy. In August, soon after the bankruptcy became public, they invited Lew to join the company as CEO.
He told BRAIN that the new EDCO company will now be headquartered in Scottsdale. Lew and Tiernan plan to negotiate new contracts with former and potential customers at both the Eurobike and Interbike shows.
Lew also remains a vice chairman of the WFSGI wheel committee and planned to attend that committee's meeting at Eurobike.
| A BicycleRetailer release || August 28, 2017 |||
The NZ election campaign coincides with a crunch time for the future of the Trans Pacific Partnership. In the absence of the US, attempts to renegotiate an 11-member TPP risk scuppering a deal that could bring enormous benefits to New Zealand, argues Stephen Jacobi, executive director of the NZ International Business Forum.
Good ideas never die and so it has proved with TPP. No amount of huffing and puffing from the arch-protectionists and the anti-globalists, not even the president of the United States, has (yet) been able to consign TPP to history. Those people with genuinely held concerns about aspects of the agreement – and there are many – might wonder why this is so. It’s because the remaining 11 parties to the agreement continue to see it as a means of accelerating trade and investment growth and providing a new benchmark for improving the rules against which business is done in the region. The parties are convinced that the agreement, as negotiated, contains the necessary safeguards to protect domestic sovereignty and the continuing rights of governments to regulate in the national interest.
Officials are meeting again in Sydney this week to try to hammer out a recommendation for TPP leaders to consider when they gather for the APEC Economic Summit in Danang, Viet Nam in November. Officials have met on two earlier occasions since the United States withdrew from the agreement. Reports suggest the coalition is holding at least for the meantime. At issue now is the extent to which the agreement, signed in Auckland in February 2016, and ratified by both Japan and New Zealand, should be amended other than simply the clause by which it enters into force. The latter clearly needs to be changed, but is that all?
Continue to read the full article here | An opinion piesce by Stephen Jacobi for The Spinoff || August 29, 2017 |||
Yang Shuang reports for Fresh Plaza that as of August 22, one of the leading Chinese fruit companies, Fruit Day, and JD.com have officially started to sell persimmons from New Zealand. Their platform is one of the first to sell New Zealand's persimmons in China. After 12 years of negotiations the first batch has finally arrived on the Chinese market.
Last year, in May, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China (AQSIQ) published the "Inspection and Quarantine Administration requirements for New Zealand persimmon and Turkish cherries." On May 27, products that fulfilled these conditions of, were approved to be imported to China. This year, on July 20, China's AQSIQ has once again updated the list of New Zealand persimmon exporters who have been allowed to export New Zealand persimmon onto the Chinese market.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise agency trade commissioner Damon Paling said: "I am delighted that New Zealand's crunchy persimmon will be able to enter China for the first time this summer. The New Zealand fruit is tastier than ordinary persimmon - it's sweet and delicious. I hope that Chinese consumers will like it."
Crunchy persimmon growing on plantation
Fruitday imported this first batch from a company called 'First'. It actually was the 'first' company to have its products approved by China's AQSIQ. First's crunchy persimmon plantation is situated on the east coast of New Zealand, in Gisborne. But it's not only the unique environment that makes persimmons from First so good, but also a special V-planting technology, which helps to reduce the negative impact of insects. This technology also lets more sunlight reach the fruits, so they can become even sweeter.
Special V-planting techniquesZhao Guozhang, co-founder of Fruitday, said: "We are very confident about our sources of supply. Our purchasing mission has traveled all over the world to find the best fruits. New Zealand combines perfect natural conditions with well-developed agricultural technologies. Their products earned their customers the highest appreciation. New Zealand is a very important source of supply for us. It has a lot of world-famous farmers, brands and associates who are our indispensable fruit partners.
Fruitday is a pioneer and an innovator. Since it's very foundation Fruitday has been promoting high quality fruits from New Zealand. In the last eight years, we've made a lot of new fruits available on China's market. For example: Zespri Sungold kiwifruits, Zespri Green kiwifruits, Envy apples, Queen Rose apples, New Zealand honey pears and a lot of other fruits that have never been sold in China before. Fruit Day is still working hard to bring even more high quality fruits and to gain more trust from Chinese government officials. Being a company that introduces new kinds of fruits to the Chinese market, Fruit Day have become the number one choice for their partners.
About Fruit DayFruitday was founded in 2009. It is a new kind of food enterprise and one of the leaders on the market. Fruit Day works with the food suppliers all over the world. The company has an App for on-line sales and also uses off-line channels of distribution, which allows it to satisfy as many customers as possible. Fruit Day have their own direct sales platform, private cold storage and cold chain logistics.
| A FreshPlaza release || August 28, 2017 |||
Revivalist opportunity perceived at last moment
An outbreak of middle class idealism based on party immigration policy promises to boost the Green vote at the expense of Labour, and to a rather lesser extent, National, and even New Zealand First.
A sign of this is the 11th hour awakening is decision of the Greens to field a candidate in Ohariu in which the Labour candidate Greg O’Connor had seemed a shoo-in following the resignation of the enduring independent incumbent Peter Dunne MP.
Mr O’Connor (pictured) is one of the very candidates anywhere in the entire Westminster sphere who meets the traditional Labour Party guidelines. A tough street-level cop, deployed into the most troublesome zones, he went on to run the police union for an entire generation.
The Greens understand that Labour will respond with their own counter truce-breaking reprisal of some kind before the general election.
But the electorate move in Wellington’s up-scale suburb of Karori with its horse-riding schools and country club environs by the Greens is one of the party’s several calculated risks in the last few months and a closer examination of this one indicates a strategic positioning which also contains a strong surprise value.
The Green Party is the only party to have an ironclad policy embracing the acceptance in New Zealand of refugees, the ones from nations torn by tribalism and sectarianism.
All the other parties have hedged around the refugee issue, seeking to bury it in their wider immigration policies covering desired skills and economic contributions.
Facebook commentaries whizzing around between greying baby boomer ex- activists also indicate that Labour’s new leader Jacinda Ardern MP is expected to conjure up a reprise, if only partial, of the Labour glory days of the Vietnam-Apartheid-Nuclear era.
Great revivalist expectations such as this were simply not even to be considered under former leader, the pragmatic Andrew Little whose non telegenic façade shrouded a subtle blend in fact of the Trades Hall-varsity nexus and union lawyer.
Winston Peters MP and his New Zealand First Party will remain substantially, but not entirely, inoculated against any late-developing fever centred on the asylum-seeking category of immigrant.
This is just because New Zealand First’s most visible policy plank is the thumbs down to most immigrant categories regardless of whether they come bearing gifts or sectarian blood feuds.
The prospect of the Greens unveiling a high profile moral compass pointing to refugees in the accepted meaning of the word, and thus igniting a last minute bush-fire type of guilt-propelled fervour, is a prospect that Labour appears to be anticipating now.
We look now at the election eve multi-faceted immigration issue in its wider sense ……………………………….
THE GREEN PARTY
Advantage of humanitarian position on refugeesThe children of the baby boomers appalled by middle class material values of their parents, who they often regard as sell-outs anyway, , reach for an ideal, in this instance the refugee one, in order to re-establish the nation as a force for good in the world. The Greens offer the only unequivocal policy in regard to accepting refugees, especially the ones that other nations do not want.
Argument against The children of the baby boomer beset by the need now for dual incomes and the financial demands of the tertiary education required by their own offspring are suspicious of the financial and social impact of the moral crusades of the type embarked upon by their parents in their own university days. These were free of charge and the parental generation in addition was often actually paid to enrol and attend university, incredible as it may seem now.
THE LABOUR PARTY
Advantage in stressing a new and enhanced humanitarian position on refugees
A breath of fresh air into the Helen Clark era doctrine of multiculturalism and diversity offering New Zealand an opportunity to walk tall once more in all the right international convocations, notably United Nations
Argument againstA disquieting medium-term memory of the way in which Auckland schools, houses, and hospitals began to creak at the seams during, and after, the immigration influx inaugurated during this same era.
The National Party
Advantage in suddenly opening the policy gates to refugeesAn indirect reminder that gung-ho immigration policy inherited from Labour ensured that businesses kept at full throttle and that the nation’s lavish, on a population basis, investment in universities of all description became partially shouldered by foreign students. A German-style open door refugee policy could/would sustain and enhance this
Argument againstImmigration was used to fuel the “rock star” economy at the expense of infrastructure which in this context is code for houses, schools, hospitals. Also that the increasing reliance on the private students from foreign lands and their need to collect a degree of some sort and a widespread belief that this every-punter-gets-a prize devalued these qualifications and provided also the now much-quoted “back door” for an extended if not permanent stay here.
NEW ZEALAND FIRST
Advantage in its turn-off- the-taps immigration policy.Immigrants are drawn to metropolitan centres such as Auckland already populated beyond its carrying capacity. Both National and Labour have implemented this state of affairs, the party claims. Universities have become disguised back doors for the “c’mon in” techniques devised by the immigration “consultants,” and until quite recently evident on their web sites. New Zealand First insists that immigrants must be selected on a needed and high skills basis.
Disadvantages in this policyThe drastic tourniquet is in some conflict with New Zealand First’s new role as the true saviour and champion of farmers and cultivators. They cannot find manpower locally and seek to fill this vacuum with workers from Asia especially. Their work is of the repetitive and conscientious type and does not meet the New Zealand First advanced specialist skill criterion.
Background to the all-party immigration dilemma
A very wide spectrum of voters are keen on immigration – in any form.
Big business for a start because it increases the number of consumers and the number of workers available to meet their needs.
The churches are very enthusiastic. Their inclusive view is both spiritual and practical in that people in need are manna from heaven and very much so in an epoch of dismayingly shrinking conventional congregations.
Social service agencies of all types tend to be similarly enthused
Metropolitan politicians are also enthusiasts as they see their electoral roles filling up with supplicants and thus voters.
Immigration Topics that National and Labour prefer you did not Introduce
So why has immigration replaced employment and even health and education as the most sensitive issue in this general election?These issues are widely considered to be interrelated in that many of the so-called occupied urban jobs are in fact part time only. This is considered to be due to the ample availability of people to fill them because of the swelled urban work-force because of the immigration influx which also stands accused of putting the strain on houses, schools etc.
Why is the refugee component of this issue so ultra-sensitive?It is dangerous to Labour and this has been indicated by the Green’s decision to stand its own candidate in Ohariu, which is regarded as a liberal constituency.
A sudden intensity focus on a need by New Zealand to admit many more refugees seeking asylum by the Greens would prick this liberal conscience and force the Labour Party into a defensive corner in which it has no ambition to be. Not in the run up to the election, anyway.
You could have the Greens asking for example why a nation, one of the self-proclaimed international good guys, and which has less than half of one percent of its land mass urbanised is not taking in many more?
SAN FRANCISCO — Uber chose Dara Khosrowshahi, who leads the online travel company Expedia, to be its chief executive on Sunday, two people with knowledge of the decision said. The selection capped a contentious search process as the ride-hailing company seeks to move past a turbulent period.
Mr. Khosrowshahi emerged as the leading candidate from a field of three finalists over a weekend of Uber board meetings, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were confidential.
Continue to read the full article here on the NYTimes | August 28, 2017 |||
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Focussing tightly on the idea that “information” is the foundation on which BIM is built, this CADPRO Systems' event demonstrated technology solutions that support the information flow between office and field. Supported by Stephan Gumpert from Autodesk, our own Gary Page, Adrian Lobo, and Gary Fohl presented to receptive audiences in both Auckland and Christchurch. It has been great to see the interaction between presenters and their audiences at these events with “real-world” questions being addressed live during the presentations.
CADPRO Systems CPS Tools
Also announced at these events was the launch of the CADPRO Systems CPS Tools. Through an exclusive partnership between KobiLabs and CADPRO Systems, we’re bringing some serious productivity tools to Autodesk Revit and Civil 3D:
These tools are being provided FREE of charge for the first year to all subscription & maintenance customers who have their contracts with CADPRO Systems. | A CADPRO Systems release || August 29, 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