Napier, MSCNewsWire, Thursday 30 June 2016 - New Zealand’s specialist agri-business equipment manufacturers are poised to take advantage of the trade re-alignment in Europe points out Ken Evans of production engineer Napier Engineering & Contracting.

Napier Engineering manufactures the Niven range of abattoir equipment including micro and mobile abattoirs.

Mr Evans (pictured) drew attention to the pending New Zealand –EU free trade agreement which now took on additional significance following the Brexit referendum.

The shifting sands of Britain’s trade would inevitably work in favour of Commonwealth countries, he noted.

He anticipated also that the realignment inherent in Britain’s exit from the EU and the introduction of the pending NZ-EU free trade agreement would lead to renewed investment especially by the French into the New Zealand productive sector.

He noted France’s current investment here in cement, utilities, electrical manufacturing, milking, and agricultural tracking systems.

Mr Evans said that the EU zone would become a new focus for New Zealand production engineers because the free trade agreement would substantially remove the non-tariff barriers such as standards conformity.

Mr Evans said though that the Middle East would retain its potential for New Zealand agri-business production engineers. But the problems in obtaining what he described as a “clean deal” especially in regard to payment would continue to dog the region from the New Zealand exporters point of view, he said.

Mr Evans noted that he had contributed earlier this year a paper to the EU free trade agreement deliberations.

This was because he believed that the region would give New Zealand production engineers a market for specialist agri-business equipment and one with reduced problems in such vulnerable areas as copying and receipt of payments.

He noted too that a mature market region such as the EU would reduce also the problem so evident in emerging markets of prospective equipment acquirers seeking to acquire intellectual property.

This he said was done through the ruse of an extended sales and tendering process in which drawings, pricings, and other specifications were demanded until the entire product in practical terms was handed over gratis.

Mr Evans observed that the EU sponsored FTA with New Zealand indicated that the EU had long been in the process of installing contingency plans in the event of a British departure.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' deskThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.