Electrifying the economy

Transpower’s Alison Andrew tells Tim McCready the benefits of transforming New Zealand to a low carbon economy are significant

Transpower CEO Alison Andrew points to a future where technology will continue to play an ever more significant role in New Zealand’s transformation.

“Our electrified future means electric vehicles — whether that’s our own personal cars, corporate fleets or ride share,” says Andrew. “Many of us will have solar panels and batteries in our homes, to meet some of our own demand, and the ability to trade via the interconnected grid. We’ll have energy efficient, smart homes using intelligent energy management systems that optimise the use of devices, electric vehicle charging, battery use and grid supply, all without us having to worry about it.

Andrew says that will also play over into the work environments which will be similarly efficient and smart. “It’s an exciting and empowering energy future.”

The Herald asked Andrew: Has 2020 halted sustainability progress, or has it brought it front of mind for business?

Despite the disruption brought by 2020, I believe New Zealand businesses remains as committed to progressing sustainability as before. Stakeholders and investors are demanding that we all commit to action and make greater progress toward delivering on sustainable outcomes. We have a responsibility to our customers, communities and employees that we consider the social and environmental impacts of all that we do — and take steps to ensure positive outcomes.

Economically, it already makes sense. The price of wind generation is one quarter of what it was 10 years ago, down from $140/MWh in 2010 to $35/MWh now. The price of solar generation has dropped by more than 90 per cent in the last 10 years from $400/MWh to $30/MWh today in many parts of the world. Depending on your retailer, charging an electric vehicle off peak is already the equivalent of paying 40c per litre for your fuel.

As a nation, we have the opportunity to build sustainability into the very fabric of our economy as we adjust to life post-Covid. We cannot afford to bake yet more carbon into our economy through the decisions we make today but should instead see this as a turning point in our commitment to a net-zero carbon future.

What will be the agenda for business in 2021 in terms of sustainability, including new priorities in this regard?

Covid-19 has reminded us sharply that the welfare of our people is the most critical element of our success. Having highly engaged, skilled and capable people is central to all that we do and for Transpower and has enabled us to continue delivering our service despite the disruptions. We recognise that it is essential we make the most of the strengths inherent in having a diverse and inclusive workforce and culture. We are committed to the ongoing development of our people and our organisation.

To achieve the county’s net-zero carbon emissions, we need to electrify our economy. It starts by shifting the transport sector off oil and on to electric vehicles, trucks and buses. We also need to shift heat used in industry processes or for heating our large commercial and public buildings, from coal and gas, and on to electricity. Renewable electricity will power this transformation and will be the main part of the energy puzzle although biomass, direct geothermal heat, hydrogen, biogas and biofuels also have a role to play. At Transpower we have a key role to enable this energy transformation.

What role does Transpower have in helping New Zealand realise its ambition to be a low carbon economy?

As owner and operator of New Zealand’s national transmission assets, and operator of the national electricity market system, Transpower is a critical enabler of this change. We take a whole-of-industry view of the sector and a long-term view of what needs to change across our asset base and within the market system, to ensure New Zealand can meet its ambitions while continuing to power communities securely, safely and reliably.

Of course, transforming an economy needs a very good plan and Transpower has a significant role to play in supporting this to happen. We need a roadmap for how we can develop our energy resources and when; what technology and infrastructure is required; what policy and regulatory settings are needed. This is the work we have outlined in our paper Whakamana i Te Mauri Hiko — Empowering our energy future. The benefits of this transformation are significant and an opportunity to:

  1. Create thousands of new jobs.
  2. Meet our emissions reduction targets.
  3. Reduce average household energy bills by around 25 per cent by 2035.
  4. Improve our air quality with health benefits.
  5. Reduce our reliance on imported fuels thereby improving security of supply and our trade balance.
  6. And finally, to carve out a competitive advantage — improving our international brand and attracting international investors seeking green places to do business.

What challenges are Transpower facing (internal or external) over the coming year in making this happen and what approaches are needed to overcome them?

We have identified nine key areas of focus that will require collaboration across industry if we wish to achieve a net-zero carbon future. These include policy changes to remove barriers to low-carbon infrastructure and incentivise electrification and renewables, including RMA reform.

An immediate focus for Transpower is to streamline our connections process so new generation can be connected into the grid more effectively.

We are also focused on improved grid planning so we can be proactive in making this transition happen. We need to do this alongside industry and drawing from the collective knowledge that exists across the sector. The benefit for everyone is that we can all plan for the future, more effectively.

A  more challenging nut to crack is ensuring we have access to the skilled workforce needed to deliver on this future. We need improved vocational training, greater workforce diversity and a stronger sector brand that attracts young people motivated by our goal of decarbonisation.

Sustainable Finance: Flying into the future

Despite the pandemic creating significant budgetary constraints for Christchurch Airport, it has strengthened the airport’s sustainability ambitions and caused it to reprioritise its work programmes so as not to compromise its sustainability goals.

Tim McCready speaks with Christchurch Airport chief executive Malcolm Johns about the role infrastructure will play in moving New Zealand toward a lower carbon future and the opportunities it could bring for the airport.

Herald: What are the big challenges we need to overcome as we move toward a low carbon future?

The embedded nature of emissions in our daily lives shows just how hard the task ahead is if we are to stay within the 1.5 degree target set in Paris. For example, during Level 4 lockdown here in New Zealand, we effectively suspended 40 per cent of the national economy (including 90 per cent of aviation) and New Zealand’s emissions fell just 8 per cent! This is largely because the economic ecosystem we have built up over generations is linear in nature and operates on a “take-make-waste” model. This has embedded emissions deeply into our everyday way of life, and in a way that makes it hard for the average person to individually have any real impact on overall emission reductions.

If we step back from this for a moment, the foundation of this conversation is energy. The linear system we have built has been scaled up over time through access to cheap energy. We are living today on yesterday’s energy and we can only do that because of how carbon and the earth’s process have given us a rich, dense, transportable and tradable energy commodity.

To use this energy, we have spent trillions of dollars on assets that predominantly only run on this ancient energy. To support the operation of these assets, we have built trillions of dollars more in infrastructure. Thus, today our way of life is built on a global economic system that deeply embeds our CO2 emissions dependency.

Cars are a good example.

Every day the world produces around 75,000 new cars and lite vehicles. More than 90 per cent of them have combustion engines and will last for several decades into the future, thus embedding new transport emissions into the system.

How can we move away from this reliance on “ancient energy”?

To change this system, we must undertake one of humanity’s largest ever re-tooling events. This will either be a massive re-tooling of the assets towards those that operate on today’s energy (renewable energy) or a massive re-tooling of the way we live. Our choice is either A: change the assets, B: change the people, or C: fail.

For most countries, A is the only real option left as changing the people is a slow process that can really only occur over time. But A requires a change plan and investment on a scale not seen in modern history. It will only happen if we achieve stakeholder equity in the transition. A grand carbon coalition between consumers and shareholders and Government. No one party will achieve such an energy transition on its own. This is incredibly disruptive stuff!

 What role will infrastructure play in a lower carbon future?

Modern, sustainable infrastructure will play a key role. Where old infrastructure creates inefficiencies or fails to support lower carbon options for its users, it will need to be left behind in favour of new infrastructure that is sustainable and can support lower carbon futures for its users.

Christchurch Airport has worked to achieve stakeholder equity in many of the changes forced upon it from the earthquakes almost a decade ago. High consequence events give you the opportunity to bring in a “new normal”. It’s your choice how much “new” and how much “normal’ is contained within this. From a sustainability perspective, we have driven our own asset transition plans to ensure our infrastructure, old and new, can support a lower carbon future for our customers and our business. This has required some upfront investment which our shareholders have supported. The result is we have driven almost 90 per cent of Scope 1 CO2 emissions out of our business!

How has Covid-19 changed your ability to execute on your sustainability programmes?

Covid-19 cannot be an excuse for non-execution of sustainability programmes. It is reasonable that it may slow the pace of things in the short term if survival is paramount, but this is why a carbon coalition of stakeholders is important — you can only keep going in times like this when you have stakeholder equity available to allow you to do so.

Christchurch Airport has not only preserved near term investment in its sustainability programmes, it has also chosen to accelerate its plans in areas such as seeking ‘Airport Carbon Accreditation Level 4’ through the Airports Council International.

This programme is focused on creating long-term pathways to net zero carbon, aligned with global science-based targets to keep temperatures within 1.5 degrees. This would be a world-first in terms of Airport standards, and it is largely because Covid gave us the time and resources to look at committing to this programme sooner rather than later, that we pushed ahead with it. The earthquakes taught us that you make the ‘new’ in a new normal.

What opportunities could the drive toward a sustainable future mean for Christchurch Airport?

Airports are a portfolio business, largely serving planes, passengers and property, each with their own areas of opportunity.

We have proactively invested in infrastructure to eliminate the need for non-renewable energy power units to support aircraft on the ground, allowing them direct access to the electricity grid.

We have proactively invested in smart energy systems in our terminal, water efficiency, landfill elimination processes and most importantly, eliminating Scope 1 CO2 emissions from our terminal operation. We are now offering prospective tenants a menu of designed-in sustainability options for new buildings on our campus.

We have committed ourselves to building New Zealand’s greenest airport in Central Otago, to allow airlines to utilise their most carbon efficient aircraft in the future. We would love to see the country take on the challenge of building a multi-region low carbon, integrated transport network around this new site, that will serve Kiwis and their visitors sustainably for generations to come.

The recent announcement from Airbus that it is exploring hydrogen aircraft caught our eye. Christchurch Airport sits on top of one of New Zealand’s largest natural aquifers and has access to acres of land for solar power arrays.

Mood of the Boardroom: Hi-tech contact-tracing in favour (NZ Herald)

More can be done to minimise the economic impact of Covid, writes Tim McCready

Some 91 per cent of executives responding to the Herald’s CEOs survey want greater emphasis on intensive contact tracing using best-in-class technological capabilities.

The CEOs also want New Zealand to establish secure airbridges with other nations such as China, Taiwan and Australia — so long as we their response is also under control.

“Air bridges should be considered only when Covid-19 is truly under control and contact tracing technology is truly best in class and traces beyond the border,” says a dairy chief executive.

An experienced chairperson reckons that many — particularly older people — will want to resume international travel as soon as possible. “It should be possible on a user pays basis to allow technology-enabled devices (such as ankle bracelets) to allow returning residents and citizens to quarantine in their own homes on return from overseas.”

Public-private partnerships

There is high support — 78 per cent — for public-private partnerships (PPP) for quarantine facilities where essential workers can be quarantined at their company’s cost. PPP isolation facilities for international education students were backed by 75 per cent of respondents; a much higher level of support than PPP isolation facilities for international tourists — only 48 per cent of respondents said that should be a focus.

“The tourist isolation facility idea is similarly impracticable because tourists are unlikely to want to come to NZ and stay in such a facility for 14 days at their expense (not much of a holiday),” says a legal firm boss. “Isolation facilities for students sound good in theory but the numbers involved would make this impracticable.”

Some questioned NZ’s reliance on export education as an economic driver.

“How much was international education just a feeder to the incredibly high immigration levels over the past ten years?,” asks a property boss.

“I really think we have to critically examine this sector’s contribution — painful as that might be.”

A lobbyist believes PPPs would alleviate some of the constraints around capacity.

“Our Ministry of Health isn’t up to handling this pandemic, they have dropped the ball so many times and are very economical with the truth. A future inquiry will not be pretty for some who we rate very highly now.”

Beca Group CEO Greg Lowe emphasised the pandemic is not a short-term problem, calling for a “smart” approach to a safe border. “The Prime Minister called for ‘the smartest border in the world’ early in the crisis but we are not seeing much progress towards this,” he says.

“We have three problems currently: getting an effective system of border control robustly in place, getting a contact tracing system in place that uses technology not people to capture contact data, and developing a plan that increases safe border processing capacity.”

“Maybe we can build world-class Covid management businesses out of this,” suggests Precinct Properties chair Craig Stobo.

Others differ.

“Government-run facilities have had their challenges, and they’re just the issues you get when you need tens of thousands of people to follow processes where, if it goes wrong, people die,” says a real estate boss. “Add the inherent risk of lots of people and processes to a profit motive and I just can’t see the Melbourne situation not happening again.”

Opening the door to new industries

The Covid-19 crisis has had a severe impact on two of New Zealand’s leading service export industries: international tourism and education.

Professional director Pip Greenwood says “now is the time to leverage NZ’s attractiveness as a place to live and work to attract investment.”

CEOs were asked what alternate areas New Zealand should look to increase investment in.

Agritech is the most promising area say NZ’s top executives. A fund manager says Covid could allow New Zealand to “double down” on its premium food producing status. “Move up the quality/pricing curve to drive greater yields from our premium products and sell direct to consumers via digital gateways.

Technologically-led businesses were also supported.

Spark CEO Jolie Hodson says rather than making big bets behind a small few we should be investing in building the capability, productivity and effectiveness of all businesses. “Particularly small and medium-sized businesses who would benefit significantly from going digital,” she says.

Decarbonisation of the economy and the development of a green hydrogen industry received 3.62/5 and 3.54/5, respectively. New forms of public transport such as electric planes, received a score of 3.07/5.

The latter was the top pick for Green co-leader James Shaw at the recent BusinessNZ election conference.

He said there were NZ companies doing this, including those involved with the America’s Cup.

“We do have a niche industry that is starting to emerge here, which I would like to see grow.”

“Our biggest opportunity for decarbonisation is electric vehicles. We have enough consented and existing generation to power the nation’s vehicular fleet at circa 30c per litre,” says one professional director.

“What has happened to Helen Clark’s ‘knowledge economy’?” asks Beca Group’s CEO Greg Lowe.

“Development of alternative transport solutions, the potential of alternative fuels like hydrogen to provide a new export market, export of digital solutions and services — we should be working to build a stronger national plan to advance all of them.”

But respondents caution New Zealand not be too quick to write off our traditional export earners.

One said that realism is important in this situation, noting that tourism and export education will return.

“There is no real strategy to transform the economy either from a production perspective or around decarbonisation — it’s all hopes and dreams stuff currently.”

Capital Markets: Lessons and trends from the pandemic (NZ Herald)

We’ll be feeling the impact of Covid-19 for  a long time to come, in many different ways

Covid-19 has shaken capital markets globally, and the long-term impact will not be known for a long time.

Disruptive events tend to accelerate trends that are already in place, and Covid-19 will bring wide-ranging implications and deliver lessons into the future for organisations and individuals within the capital markets sector. Here’s some to chew on:

Digitisation, automation and cybersecurity

The most visible trend accelerated by Covid-19 is the leap forward in the digitisation of the economy. Westpac chief economist Dominick Stephens says there will be no going back: “that may be the last straw for some firms and a huge opportunity for others, but digitisation is a positive for the economy overall.”

Digitisation has long been mooted as a mega trend that will disrupt the capital markets sector, but the pandemic has necessitated a swift response. The past several months have exposed the requirement for firms to make a large number of decisions with increased speed and agility. Many expect the disruption to force firms in the capital markets sector to look at new operating models that are more automated and increasingly data-driven to address revenue challenges and drive down costs. This will include leveraging artificial intelligence, the cloud, machine learning and analytics to drive efficiency, improve productivity and improve competitiveness.

Increased competition from fintech firms has been eating away the market share from traditional players. Prior to Covid-19, industry giants in the capital markets were making moves to acquire and collaborate with fintech start-ups. This is expected to continue at pace, as they acknowledge openly the need for innovation to bolster their capability and agility.

However, the rapid digital transformation and changes in the way business is conducted has also brought with it a significant increase in fraudulent activity which will ensure cybersecurity remains an important consideration for capital markets. Cybersecurity firm McAfee’s quarterly report says there has been a surge of cybercrime exploiting the pandemic through Covid-19 themed malicious apps, phishing campaigns and malware. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had received as many cyber-attack reports by the second week of June as it had in all of 2019.

Impacts on people, ways of working and the gender pay gap

The pandemic changed the way employees around the world worked and engaged with their workplaces and proved that remote and flexible working is possible — even in capital markets where some firms have been reluctant to embrace the trend. While most workers in New Zealand have now returned to their workplaces, many agree there were values that became more pronounced during lockdown that we should try to hold on to. Organisations are now considering how they can be more flexible, agile and have a heightened awareness of employee wellbeing. At the same time, they want to ensure that the quality of work and productivity remains high.

A recent EY article questions whether this flexibility, reprioritisation of goals and consideration of what is important could help to close the gender pay gap. Firms in the capital markets are continuing to face requirements to become more diverse. In Europe, France is demanding a 40 per cent quota of women on boards. The UK has had more than 350 financial services firms sign up to the UK Government’s Women in Finance charter, where they set targets for gender diversity. But despite this, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020 revealed that gender parity will not be attained for 100 years.

EY notes the “wholesale levelling of the playing field” has the potential to challenge HR, talent and recruitment and lower long-standing barriers including those for parents with children or those with other caring responsibilities.

Cashless society edges ever closer

The arrival of a cashless society has been long-anticipated, but the events of this year have no doubt accelerated its arrival. Kiwis have embraced mobility and connectivity, and Covid-19 has seen us become more comfortable with e-commerce, Auckland Transport go cashless, and many stores encouraging cashless payment for hygiene reasons — with the contactless eftpos limit temporarily raised from $80 to $200.

The Bank for International Settlements released a bulletin in April, noting that Covid-19 has fanned public health concerns around the use of cash. It said that looking ahead, developments could speed up the adoption of digital payments around the world, including central bank digital currencies.

In China, digital payment platforms are already widespread, including Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay — so much so that in many stores cash is not accepted. Taking this a step further, China is launching a pilot programme of its digital yuan in four major cities. The currency is backed by China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, and is pegged to the national currency. Commentators say the objective of the digital yuan is to increase its circulation and become a global currency like the US dollar, and that the timing of the launch — when the rest of the world is dealing with the global pandemic — provides China with an unusual opportunity to beat private competitors such as Facebook’s Libra currency.

Surge in sustainable investing

During lockdown, many appreciated the return of birdsong to inner-city neighbourhoods and the quiet that came from the severely reduced traffic. Satellites mapping air pollution revealed a significant drop in nitrogen dioxide concentrations across Europe and China, coinciding with the strict quarantine measures.

Analysts are predicting Covid-19 to be a major turning point for ESG investing, or strategies that consider environmental, social and governance performance as increasingly important alongside financial metrics. The pandemic has highlighted how connected humans and society are to nature, plainly demonstrating how a fracture in one part of the ecosystem can compromise the entire system.

A survey of 50 global institutions by J.P. Morgan, representing US$12.9 trillion in assets under management, asked how they expect Covid-19 to impact the future of ESG investing. Some 71 per cent of respondents say it was “rather likely”,   “likely”, or “very likely” that a low probability — high impact risk like Covid-19 would increase awareness and actions globally to tackle high impact — high probability risks such as those related to climate change and biodiversity losses.

 

China Business Summit 2020: Hu Shuli address discussion (video)

China Business Summit 2020: Panel – Building a bridge to China (video)

Building a bridge to China: Panel discussion at the 2020 China Business Summit

E-commerce clearly came into its own during the Covid-19 crisis. But will the trend accelerate? And what will it take to reinstate safe travel between New Zealand and China in the Covid-19 era? Those were the questions we asked experts about and talked about the strategies the tourism and education sectors were to employ to keep the Kiwi brand upper mind until air links could be restored. We also learned about how the ‘Southern Link’ initiative between China-NZ-Latam was proving its worth.

  • Adrienne Young-Cooper, Acting Chair, Queenstown Airport
  • Lisa Li, Managing Director, China Travel Service
  • Rachel Maidment, Executive Director, NZ China Council
  • Pier Smulders, Country Manager, New Zealand at Alibaba
  • Professor Jenny Dixon, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Strategic Engagement), University of Auckland

Moderated by Tim McCready

Agribusiness: Government agencies stellar job keeps agri exports flowing (NZ Herald)

There is a massive opportunity in front of us to capture premiums. Without doubt, our brand story is at an all-time high at the moment because of what we’ve done with Covid.

NZTE chief executive Peter Chrisp says the impact of New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown had immediate consequences for its customers — New Zealand exporters.

“I’ve always worked hard. I’ve never worked this hard,” Chrisp said at an interview at NZTE’s Wellington head office.

Even prior to the coronavirus pandemic hitting New Zealand’s shores, the agency was heavily involved providing support to its customers exporting to the China market.

“China is such a big market for New Zealand with many of our customers,” said Chrisp. “They needed to know what was going on and were desperate for insights. We had 65 people in China – we had to get them working from home. They were keen to contribute and lean in to support customers.

“So that was the beginning of it, and then it just unfolded, into Italy and South Korea.”

When New Zealand entered the alert level four lockdown phase, one of the immediate issues Chrisp’s team needed to face was how to support airfreight. With passenger traffic severely limited, there wasn’t a functioning airfreight market, which many of our high-value exports — including seafood and honey — depend on.

NZTE co-ordinated around 200 charter flights to key export markets, including Shanghai, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore and Australia: “We got good backing from the ministers and the Ministry of Transport. We underwrote the capacity of the plane — the last 20 per cent of the plane.”

He said if a chartered plane wasn’t full it wouldn’t leave. The underwrite didn’t have to be used very often, but it was an important mechanism to provide certainty to exporters that their goods would make it to market.

In the medium term, a new initiative with funding allocated from the May budget will focus on supply chains, building firm capability in freight and logistics and helping to build capability within export firms.

Another of the initial challenges for exporters was ensuring sufficient cashflow for business continuity. NZTE formed partnerships with Deloitte, PwC and KPMG to provide a business continuity service for around 500 of its customers.

“From that, they got a bit of a plan about how to respond immediately, how to get their cash under control and what to do with their working capital and inventory,” Chrisp explained.

He said that while many exporters might be dealing with the current environment, they are starting to ask questions about the sales funnel and how to fill it long-term.

“I’ve been talking to some specialist manufacturers who would normally sell mostly through attending conferences, relationships with procurement mangers, and foot traffic. They are now wondering how they reach their customers.”

Many are turning to digital – which Chrisp said is one of the biggest things NZTE is engaged with at the moment. This will include scaling up e-commerce capability to provide digital commerce content, tools and advice to more exporters.

Keeping track of its current suite of clients, NZTE has developed a heat map that runs a ruler over companies and considers which companies that are thriving, surviving, or struggling.

Chrisp said this gave the agency a good feeling for where the hotspots were, and at the start of the crisis it was the export-dependant specialist manufacturing firms that he was most concerned about.

He said that though a lot of the customers of specialised manufacturing firms were considered essential overseas, they weren’t here — which had made things difficult.

The heat map is now showing around 32 per cent of companies thriving, 60 per cent surviving and about 8 per cent struggling.

“The thriving companies are across categories like food, manuka honey, nutraceuticals. But even in tech you’ve got companies involved with education software or gaming software that are doing well,” though Chrisp noted, you’ve also got people struggling in those categories as well. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) has developed a trade recovery strategy to address that. MFAT says the next phase of New Zealand’s response is recalibrating New Zealand’s trade policy for a new international environment.

The strategy, launched by trade and export growth minister David Parker, has three pillars: retooling support for exporters, reinvigorating international trade architecture, and refreshing key trade relationships.

NZTE will play a key role in this — in particular, Chrisp said it will be the custodian of the retooling pillar.

“The Government knew it couldn’t just rebuild New Zealand with a domestic fiscal spend. You need an international export recovery leg — and I think you need an investment recovery leg as well.”

Some of the $216 million funding boost it received through the Budget will be used to significantly increase the number of exporters that receive intensive support from NZTE. The agency says that collectively these exporters directly employ over 200,000 people. About 75 per cent of these firms are expected to be SMEs with 50 or fewer employees.

“We will have more customer managers that can deal with more New Zealand companies and services — and more boots on the ground in premium international markets,” Chrisp said.

Business development managers in key offshore markets will be particularly important for exporters while international travel remains restricted. It is envisaged that this team will be able to carry out additional functions for companies in-market – including meeting customers, vetting new employees, and selecting distributors.

Another portion of the funding has been allocated to expand the International Growth Fund, which helps reconnect companies with international markets and supply chain partners, as well as explore new opportunities.

Chrisp said he is keen to uphold the sense of the opportunity in front of New Zealand — particularly in the food and beverage sector.

“We’ve had food and beverage manufacturers in New Zealand that responded very well during Covid.

“The opportunity to be the most keeps agri exports flowing sustainable food producer on the planet is quite a niche — quite an exciting niche.”

One area that Covid-19 might help New Zealand is by spurring the acceleration of the shift from volume to value. Chrisp said food and beverage is at the sharp end of that.

“There is a massive opportunity in front of us to capture premiums. Without doubt, our brand story is at an all-time high at the moment because of what we’ve done with Covid. There is an opportunity to double-down on that brand story and those sustainability settings.”

“The health competitor advantage — growing food and beverage out of this healthy country and the intersection of innovation with our food and beverage story and our agritech sector, there’s some really great things that we can accelerate and advance around this.”

But, said Chrisp, a key challenge for New Zealand will be keeping the New Zealand brand alive in international markets over the next 12 months without international travel.

NZTE is working on strengthening New Zealand’s brand in priority markets by maintaining, promoting and broadening New Zealand’s brand appeal, particularly while the tourism sector is recovering.

Chrisp said it will re-emphasise New Zealand’s reputation for safety, trust, resilience, ingenuity, sustainability and high-value goods and services using the highly successful New Zealand Story strategy.

“When you think about who is probably likely to carry the New Zealand brand story, it is probably food and beverage and tech, because there are such good stories wrapped around those products and services.

“If our food comes out of a Covid-free country, it’s good for human health and it’s got a story wrapped around it about the quality of the country — that’s a particularly good story that will resonate in premium markets.”

Chrisp said it comes back to the underpinning values of kaitiaki — our role as guardians of people, place and planet and protecting what is precious over generations. We think that Covid has demonstrated that story.

“Our high integrity, high transparency, our very low corruption and our ingenuity — they are underpinning values that we think will resonate well on the international stage.”

Agribusiness: FarmIQ software platform a bonus for farms (NZ Herald)

The FarmIQ farm management software platform is in use by over 4000 New Zealand livestock and dairy farms to support farm assurance, compliance, sustainability, productivity and traceability.

Most recently, it is now meeting new demands faced by the industry post-Covid.

The platform was developed as part of the FarmIQ Primary Growth Partnership (PGP), a seven-year programme that began in 2010 with the aim to create a demand-driven, integrated value chain for red meat that could grow the value of the sector by 50 per cent by 2025.

FarmIQ’s software is now jointly owned by Pamu Farms NZ, Silver Fern Farms, Farmlands, Veterinary Enterprises, and recently received investment from MSD Animal Health.

The agriculture industry is being disrupted by the rapid emergence of digital technologies, along with increasing compliance and regulatory requirements.

FarmIQ’s platform brings together all farming data into one place, helping farmers to run more productive, profitable and sustainable farming operations.

It combines detailed animal records with information about land, feed and people.

While some farmers solely use the platform for its recording and communication efficiencies, others use it to compare and learn from the results of changing practices like planting crops or mating hoggets at different weights.

FarmIQ chief executive Darryn Pegram says the only way you can meet today’s increasing demands is through digital technology.

FarmIQ’s software pulls together all farm information into a single dashboard.

By sharing farm data with vets, processors and regulators, FarmIQ is able to create value for the entire supply chain.

An example of the benefit of this was during the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. A number of FarmIQ’s farms were able to use records dating back 18 months to identify the movements of their stock.

With this proof, the Ministry for Primary Industries was able to significantly reduce the necessary stock cull on these farms.

There is also a growing awareness and demand from consumers about their food choices, seeking traceability of food across the supply chain.

In major markets around the world, customers are prepared to pay a premium for sustainable food grown and produced in New Zealand. This is only expected to increase in a post-Covid era.

“By treating compliance as a by-product of productivity, it makes compliance easy and improves the quality of information that flows through the entire ecosystem,” says Pegram.

“FarmIQ allows producers to help tell the New Zealand provenance story on the world stage, while also demonstrating the integrity of its supply chain.”

He says the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in agriculture and highlights the need for digital transactions.

“This is likely to continue to escalate, as demand and requirements for biosecurity and remote assurance steps up.”

Pegram says that FarmIQ’s software platform has the potential to create new value for farmers the world over, and the recent investment in the company by MSD Animal Health — a division of global healthcare company Merck & Co — is recognition of the considerable potential the FarmIQ platform has for use in global markets.

“We often field inquiries from farmers and agribusinesses in Australia and other countries that don’t have comparable products.

“We can see that as software becomes an increasingly important part of hardware offerings, we’ll have new opportunities to reach foreign farmers.”

Pandemic pivot

FarmIQ’s platform was able to help the industry quickly respond to the Covid-19 pandemic during New Zealand’s alert level four.

During New Zealand’s strict national lockdown, Synlait was able to continue audits on its farms with FarmIQ providing remote visibility of what was happening on-farm.

“Synlait were able to maintain their very high standards of food integrity while keeping their farmers, staff and auditors all remote from each other and safe from the spread of Covid-19,” says Pegram.

“The process also offers efficiencies and is popular with farmers as less time is spent on farm looking at records.

“Synlait completed the audits with a short physical visit once lockdown was over.”

While designed for farms, the FarmIQ team are using their software in their Wellington head office. All staff and visitors use the Safevisit app they developed with Farmlands for contact tracing.

“We knew FarmIQ was a fantastic biosecurity tool,” says Pegram. “But we didn’t really imagine it would be called on as a holistic solution for animals, plants and people too.”

Vision week day one – Opportunity NZ: why a vision is necessary (NZ INC.)

Visionweek NZ 2020 kicked off today, asking us to imagine if New Zealand’s five million-strong population set a vision for our future that ensures New Zealand’s long-term sustainability, productivity, resilience and high-quality outcomes for all people, communities and the environment.

The week-long programme features prominent New Zealanders, including Xero founder Rod Drury, Sir Stephen Tindall, economist Shamubeel Eaqub, Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck, former NZ chief science advisor Sir Peter Gluckman, Spark CEO Jolie Hodson and Auckland Transport’s chair Adrienne Young-Cooper.

The organisers say Covid-19 has created the conditions to reset our path, to take advantage of the huge opportunities that eliminating Covid provides, and to address some critical areas like climate change, equality of opportunity, and mental health where urgent action is needed.

Visionweek founder Paul Blair says, “A vision can create the ‘north star’ that links our team of five million, but it needs to quickly translate into a multi-decade, multi-partisan nation-building plan. Our plan needs to realise New Zealand’s untapped potential and put people, purpose and planet at the heart of transforming Kiwis lives for the better.”

Each day this week is focused on a different theme. Today’s is ‘Opportunity NZ: why a vision is necessary.’

Sir Stephen Tindall says the real opportunity is for us to come up with strategies that leverage our strengths. He notes our energy is 82 per cent renewable which is something the rest of the world is hugely jealous of.

“I’ve kind of seen with my involvement with both Rocket Lab and Team New Zealand, that if you use what I would call 21st century technology, and we actually gear up as a country to actually utilise and leverage that, we could do so much more than we’re doing right now,” he says.

Sir Stephen Tindall

“I’d love to think that every New Zealander thought through the sustainability lens and how much we could leverage that to our benefit, because there’s huge corporations around the world that want to invest in that. They want to impact investing into green things. We could be the microcosm of that in New Zealand, for them to learn how they can do it in their country.”

Panuku’s corporate responsibility advisor, Tessa Meyer, was recently awarded the New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) Future Thinker of the Year for 2020.

Tessa Meyer

She says tackling the pandemic and climate change at the same time is daunting, and while it may be tempting to go back to normal, we have an extraordinary opportunity to use the resources that are at our disposal to tackle both challenges at the same time.

“I really hope that we can readjust some of our priorities,” she says. “Putting a green recovery, ahead of a simple financial recovery and investing in infrastructure that helps accelerate our de-carbonization and promotes environmental and social resilience. In 10 years’ time I would really like to look back on what we have done with this opportunity and know that we spent it on the right things.”

Professor Paul Spoonley says New Zealand is a small, relatively nimble country and is able to react to and develop new policies to address some of the negative consequences of Covid-19.

“It is an opportunity for us to really consider what a 21st century New Zealand might look like and to begin to shift resources and support and policy in ways that, privilege, the new way of doing business of living in this century.”

Professor Paul Spoonley

He says that baby boomers are now politically very significant and determining policy, but we’re not giving enough space and air time to some of the subsequent generations.

“I’m feeling excited, because I think there is a moment now when we begin to talk about our systems, our policies and the way in which we are going to operate in the future in a way that probably we would never have had without the pandemic,” he says.

Sir Peter Gluckman says the dynamic digital sector and entrepreneurship means that our geographical position in the world is not as disadvantageous as it used to be, because we are now more connected.

“We showed we can work very well in a virtual world, in a digitally connected world,” he says, pointing to Rocket Lab and Weta Workshops as examples.

Sir Peter Gluckman

Considering a Māori world view, Kono chief executive Rachel Taulelei says “while there is not necessarily one view, there is a commonality in and around values and the way that we might think intergenerationally.”

She describes it as being hardwired for collective responsibility for people.

“We have a particular relationship obviously with our land and our water. We revere them and we view them as our tupina, our ancestors. So, we love and care for them in a way that we might a brother or sister or a grandparent or any other relation in that respect.”

Rachel Taulelei

Visionweek has been made possible by the support of multiple partners, including Sustainable Business Council, Internet NZ, the Construction Sector Accord, EECA, Business New Zealand, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, the Ministry for the Environment, Infrastructure New Zealand and ASN Media.

All New Zealanders are invited to share their thoughts, using the hashtag #visionweeknz, so that as many viewpoints as possible can be integrated into the final report.

-Tim McCready

Auckland’s infrastructure projects must go on: Phil Goff Q&A (NZ INC.)

Phil Goff speaks with Tim McCready about the impact of Covid-19 on Auckland’s infrastructure plans.

In February this year, Auckland Council was focused on the challenges ahead of a city enjoying relentless growth: building transport infrastructure to relieve traffic congestion, coping with the highest ever level of building consents, and dealing with environmental issues including water quality and climate change.

Just two months on, those issues haven’t gone away, but Auckland Council is now facing additional challenges in the wake of Covid-19.

Financially, there will be an unprecedented loss of revenue in the coming financial year of between $250m and $450m. Much of the lost revenue is not through rates, but from the loss of its dividend from Auckland International Airport, reduced fare revenue from Auckland Transport, lower regional fuel tax and less development contributions.

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff says the depression in the 1930s saw the Government pull spending back so much that while it balanced its books, “the cure killed the patient”. He is determined to keep Auckland’s infrastructure projects going as much as possible:

“There will likely be a reduction of infrastructure projects in the coming year, maybe $300m worth, but we will still be spending a whole lot more than we have on average over the last five years on an annual basis,” he says.

“We want to make sure that we’re still creating that infrastructure that the city has been waiting so long for, that it so desperately needs, and which is going to be a core part of actually stimulating the economy, getting jobs going, getting income going and helping to secure recovery.”

Here’s what Goff had to say on a few big issues facing New Zealand’s biggest city:

Work has started back on the City Rail Link now, but we’ve heard that the cost is likely to blow out – do you know what the scale of that will be?

The month-long closure of the CRL is likely to cost probably around, or something in excess of $30m. That’s never welcome, but we had no choice in the matter.

We have a new challenge now – getting some of the specialist staff that we need to do the work internationally, at a time when our borders are closed. I’ll be making submissions to Ministers – obviously we’d need to follow a quarantine process, but we really need that international staff in to not further delay the project.

There is an opportunity here to potentially speed up the CRL project by starting work at multiple sites. We are already doing that to a certain extent now – working on Aotea Centre, working on Karangahape Road, Mt Eden and continuing with the tunnel. If the Government is able to bring some of its capital from its shovel-ready project into CRL, then rather than this being a setback, it could be a chance to advance our programmes.

Auckland Council has submitted 73 priority ‘shovel-ready’ infrastructure projects to the Government’s Infrastructure Industry Reference Group. What do you hope they will achieve for Auckland?

It enables us to create the infrastructure that we desperately need as a city, so that’s something that’s worthwhile in its own right. But we have premised these projects around projects that are ready to go, we’ve consented them, we’ve often done the procurement for them, and we can get them up and going as quickly as possible to create jobs, generate income and help stimulate the recovery that our city and our country desperately needs.

Auckland is uniquely well-placed to assist the recovery of New Zealand in that regard. We’ve been professional in the way that we’ve put the projects up, there are 73 projects, we’ve said 30 are priorities. We know that we can expect a fair share of the money, we are ready to go and we can assist the Government with its recovery objective.

There has been some criticism that the projects put forward haven’t been transformational enough and don’t represent the once-in-a-generation opportunity that this situation has provided. What would you say to that?

We followed the Government criteria – the Government provides the money, they set the criteria. But I reject the criticism anyway – there is a whole lot in our submission which is about mode shift. It’s about bringing forward projects that will assist public transport, that will assist walking and cycling, that will get busways underway. Those are projects that meet our environmental and our transport objectives – reducing traffic congestion, reducing carbon emissions. These are the sort of things that we need to do for the long-term future, as well as needing to deal with the immediate ramifications of Covid-19 and the recession it’s causing.

Will Council be looking at ways to speed up projects – expediting things like resource consent?

There are things we have changed already. For example, noise controls have been lifted – maybe to the detriment of people who live in hearing distance of some of these construction projects, but it means they can work a slightly longer day and a longer working week. We will all have to give up something in order to achieve the wider objective. That is an example of how we have already changed the resource consent requirement to try to facilitate the construction industry getting back on its feet more quickly. The noise might go on a bit longer, but it means the project will be done more quickly, and that disruption will end more quickly, so there is a benefit there as well.

Compulsory water restrictions for Auckland are almost certain with the region’s storage dams dropping below 50 per cent. Around $2.3 billion is due to be spent over two decades on capital works to accommodate Auckland’s growing water consumption – should Council be doing more now to future-proof Auckland’s water supply?

The potential necessity for water restrictions in Auckland is due to the significant lack of rainfall we have experienced since summer. Rainfall levels in January and February have been the lowest on record. Coupled with the very long hot summer and higher demand, the water supply lakes have fallen below 50 per cent full compared with an historical average of around 75 per cent. In addition to this, the long-range weather forecasts do not predict any significant rainfall. Watercare is running a public media campaign to encourage people to reduce usage and are maximising the take from the Waikato River.

In terms of infrastructure, Watercare is continuing to upgrade the Waikato water treatment plant so it can process an additional 25 million litres per day —this work is deemed an essential activity and is due to be complete in around three months. Watercare has also submitted a project through the “shovel-ready” process which proposes the construction of a second water treatment plant and new boost pump station that will increase water treatment capacity by 75 million cubic metres a day and increase pipeline conveyance capacity from 150 to 225 million cubic metres per day.

This project is worth around $300 million to $350 million and will be critical in addressing long-term water resilience in Auckland.

2021 was shaping up to be a banner year for Auckland – with the America’s Cup, Apec, and many other international events. What impact will Covid-19 have on this?

I’m not sure yet what impact this will have on Auckland 2021 – we don’t know yet when our borders will be opened up. We’re hopeful that with the success of New Zealand and Australia, maybe we can open a trans-Tasman border, maybe we can get those tourists back in at least from Australia and maybe the Pacific.

But you take something like the America’s Cup, it’s due to start with the Christmas race in December of this year – will we be ready to have an influx of tourists from around the world? I don’t know the answer to that.

We are keen to see the race and we do want those superyachts here – they bring a lot of money to the country. But we’re also keen to get the economic benefit that covers the cost of the infrastructure that we’ve built to enable to race to take place. We want the tourists to come and enjoy the race and enjoy New Zealand. At the same time, there will still be the benefit that we will be projecting our city and country to the world if the race takes place. That is important as well.

I’m not pushing the Government to do anything that is against health advice. The health and wellbeing of us as New Zealanders comes first. But when we can reopen those borders, having those events in our city, and in New Zealand will give the boost that the tourism and the accommodation sectors need to recover from what has been a bruising period for them.

It feels a little like Apec has been doomed from the start – with the convention centre fire and now Covid-19. What do you think the appetite will be for people to travel – particularly for the Leaders’ Week in November next year? Will we see a mass delegation of world leaders emerge in Auckland?

The leaders won’t want to put themselves at risk. Covid-19 makes no exceptions – we’ve seen prime ministers – Russian and British – come down with the disease. We don’t want people coming to the country to put us at risk if Covid-19 has not been properly dealt with by that time.

Apec in Chile was put off last year, I suspect it’s in real doubt for this year in Malaysia. I think the leaders, if it’s safe to do so – for them and for us – will be ready to come together and have that interaction face-to-face which has been an important aspect of Apec.

Is there anything you’ve seen from the alert level four restrictions that you might like to retain? Personally, I have enjoyed the fact that Cornwall Park has closed its gates to traffic – there has been plenty of space to spread out.

Can we learn things from it? Of course. In every crisis, there is a threat and there’s an opportunity. I think we will see opportunities out of this, things that we can do better.

One of the things we saw was that when you get cars off the road, the air quality is probably the best that Auckland has seen in a generation. And the quietness of the city – we won’t get back to that, but people are saying, gosh, I can hear the birdsong again.

One of the things we can keep is the flexibility around working. If it is possible for people to work effectively from home, why not give them the chance to do that, maybe several days a week? People want to have the social interaction, but they can spend time at home, as well. They can work more flexibly, and that more flexible working I think will be great for things like traffic congestion, efficiency, and people being able to enjoy their working week more.

A bit more amorphous but nonetheless important – He waka eke noa – we are all in this together, and being kind to people, being considerate. We probably haven’t seen this since the war, when people said: “hey, we’re in the same battle together and we are looking after each other.” I hope that we can retain that sort of sentiment going forward.

© NZ INC.