When a New Zealand businessman needed to solve a unique transportation problem, he sought out a Bend (OR)company for help. Tiger Tugs, a subsidiary of Cutting Edge Design Inc. in southeast Bend, recently finished work on a modified version of its standard remote-control helicopter tug. While standard Tiger Tugs can only move a helicopter forward and backward into a hangar, the new version, the Typhoon, can move in any direction. Steve Hill, founder of Tiger Tugs, said this will allow the New Zealand businessman to land a helicopter on his luxury yacht, and turn it sideways to fit it into…

ContainerCo (NZL) Limited (ContainerCo), the container depot operator, today announced that it will develop a major new container services facility in Hawke’s Bay as reported earlier in the year on MSCNewsWire The new purpose built facility will be developed on a five hectare site in Mersey Street, within the Napier City Council’s industrial zone. Over time, it is expected that $5-10m will be invested in the site development. ContainerCo’s managing director Ken Harris said that the investment both reflects and supports the growth of exports and imports in Hawke’s Bay as well as the continued success of Napier Port in…

Pro Golfer Bubba Watson, Oakley and Martin Aircraft have teamed up to create the Golf Cart Jetpack. The humble golf cart is not very slick, but it gets the job done. So is there a better way to get from tee to green? In 2013, pro golfer Bubba Watson, along with Oakley and Neoteric Hovercraft, posed this question with a Golf Cart Hovercraft. Now, with the help of Martin Aircraft, the team has taken to the skies with the Golf Cart Jetpack. Based on Martin's current pre-production prototypes, the Golf Cart Jetpack can fly as high as 3,000 feet (914…

Increasingly awkward national role as US foreign policy cheerleader US Vice President Joe Biden’s “touchdown” this week in New Zealand presents New Zealand premier John Key with the problem of having to enthuse over several issues that he knows are actually or potentially damaging to the economy, or are being viewed as unlikely to happen. They are:- China’s expansion into the South China Sea. This falls on top of the steel dumping issue. Any overt condemnation of China’s territorial incursions into the South China Sea has the possibility of very severely damaging New Zealand’s dairy exports. China’s economy is a…

Her Majesty always committed to Commonwealth but Doctrinal UK commentators bamboozle naïve NZ counterparts Three powerful figures are now ranged behind a restoration of the Commonwealth trade and emigration bloc centred on Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.They are Her Majesty the Queen, foreign secretary Boris Johnson, and international trade secretary Dr Liam Fox. Her Majesty is known to favour a return of the active and operational Commonwealth era. The Queen is the head of the Commonwealth and has remained its consistently most ardent supporter. Foolishly, what is left of the print media here, and which is in thrall to elements…

Friendship with Sir David Attenborough seen as big plus for car-buff presenter Paul Henry’s mysterious mid-winter holiday is increasingly being ascribed to the television showman’s candidacy for the BBC’s most valuable property which is the motor series Top Gear. Mr Henry (pictured above) is known to have been considered for the anchor role when it originally became vacant when defining presenter Jeremy Clarkson made his departure. Since then the show has floundered, notably during the term as presenter of a well-known British disc jockey and is now often referred to as Top Flop. The BBC has too much invested in…

Hawkes Bay institutions anticipate port ship mechanical services demand Napier, MSCNewsWire, Thursday 14 July 2016 - Two historic pillars of the Hawkes Bay economy are evaluating a joint approach in developing Napier as a focus for ship repair in the South Seas. They are the Port of Napier itself and Napier Engineering and Contracting whose 150 year history has been closely linked to the progress of the port. Napier Engineering is the east coast’s major heavy engineer and in association with the port undertakes vessel repairs while the ships are wharfside. The company specialises in rapid deployment repairs begun and…

 Successive governments by trying to appease fashionable activists end up by pleasing nobody Napier, MSCNewsWire, Wednesday 13 July 2016 -  In quite recent times New Zealand governments in seeking to placate powerfully placed, but non-productive, lobby sectors have systematically disrupted and damaged the entire house building sector, one of the nation’s core industries. Below are listed the main appeasement policies with, in bold type, the lobby and activist category that caused them to happen, and the result of each of these as they made their impact on house building. The lesson is how a bedrock national industry has become so…

A view from afar - While a project is underway to make a bike path that would stretch along the East Coast of the U.S., in Auckland, New Zealand, some clever designers have covered a former highway offramp with a shocking pink nonslip resin to create a bike path that has just been shortlisted for this year’s World Architecture Awards. Designed by Monk Mackenzie architects and landscape architecture firm LandLab, the Nelson Street Cycleway (known as “the Light Path”) opened in December and has already been christened by more than 100,000 cyclists.The 0.37-mile offramp turned bike path cuts through the…

NZ idealogues continue to suppress any airing of the real water issue

Doors fly open with global re-alignment. But payment and copying pitfalls still haunt manufacturers & production engineers