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78
BayBuzz
September + October 2024
Huge decisions ahead for HB. Unison upgrades. Acute shortages of HRT. HB’s surprising exports. Peter Beck’s Rocket Lab flies high. EIT redux. Big batteries in our future. Paynter bashes banks. Winemakers with a difference. Celebrating bakers. To AI or not.
Photo: Florence Charvin
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Cover story
For many women HRT is a lifesaving medication. “It is not a lifestyle choice.”
Dr Samantha Newman
Cover photo: Dr Samantha Newman by Florence Charvin
BayBuzz team
EDITOR: Tom Belford
DEPUTY EDITOR: Lizzie Russell
SENIOR WRITERS: Tom Belford; Abby Beswick; Rosheen FitzGerald; Damon Harvey; Mark Sweet
COLUMNISTS: Prue Barton; Andrew Frame; Yvonne Lorkin; Kate McLeay; Paul Paynter; Lizzie Russell; Dominic Salmon; Simon Shattky; Jess Soutar Barron; Ian Thomas
BUSINESS WRITER: Brenda Newth
EDITOR’S RIGHT HAND: Brooks Belford
PHOTOGRAPHY: Florence Charvin
ILLUSTRATION: Ruth Mitchener; Brett Monteith
DESIGN: Unit Design - Max Parkes; Giselle Reid
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Giselle Reid
PROOFREADER: Jenny Elliott
ONLINE: Lee Tong
BUSINESS MANAGER: Steph Lowry
PRINTING: Blue Star Group
ISSN 2253-2625 (Print)
ISSN 2253-2633 (Online)
This document is printed on an environmentally responsible paper produced using Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) pulp sourced from Sustainable & Legally Harvested Farmed Trees, and manufactured under the strict ISO14001 Environmental Management System.
Not all about food ... stamps, fans, software, cannabis seeds.
56 Rocket Lab’s stellar trajectory
Keith Newman
Rocketing achievements for Mahia-launched business.
60 EIT back in our hands?
Lucy Laitinen, REDA
Hopes and plans afoot to get EIT freestanding again.
10: Te Mata Peak at sunrise
Photo: Florence Charvin
Ideas + Opinion
62 Large batteries aren’t going anywhere, and we’re ready
Dominic Salmon
With EVs come big batteries ... what’s the road ahead?
64 Banks … we deserve better Paul Paynter
Banks are licensed to create money; they need to be more responsible.
Life
68 Uku Clay
Lizzie Russell
Annette Bull and Natham
Crossan’s biennial clay exhibition returns.
70 Take a bake
Prue Barton
Visiting some of HB’s tastiest bakers.
74 Atypical and Super-Sippical
Yvonne Lorkin
Meet some HB winemakers breaking the mold.
78 Creatures of habit
Janine Couchman
What actually works to create lasting change?
80 I am not a robot
Jess Soutar Barron Is AI your friend or foe?
42: Polo with a special purpose. Photo: Florence Charvin
From the editor
Tom Belford
Engagement exhaustion
I’m surprised that I’m writing this column ... it calls for less public consultation.
I’ve spent most of my professional life overseas advising advocacy groups on how to get in the ears of public officials and helping them raise money to do it.
Here in New Zealand this process of ‘engagement’ is highly prescribed, mainly through archaic ‘public consultation’ requirements that dictate on what occasions, in what form and for how long the public must be listened to. As if picking up the mobile and firing off a scorching text, email or earful to the rascals wasn’t effective enough.
The resulting sterilised process disappoints both citizens (the very few ‘regulars’ who do engage) and officials, clouding the real issues with bickering over consultation windows, whether submissions should dictate what councils do (60 for, 35 against, sold), how to count a submission with a bunch of names (is it 1 or 75?), what significance to attach to ‘form’ submissions, and so forth ... and wasting a lot of time.
So here I am, in my dotage, having written an ‘issues’ feature later in this mag (Major decisions for HB ... engagement exhaustion ahead?), suggesting that both citizens and officials need to reconsider the whole approach to what councils now refer to as ‘public engagement’.
Councils are interested mainly in two things: 1) politics – what is the general ratepayer mood or value tilt on an issue of high importance; and 2) substance – what otherwise ‘missed’ insight, innovative idea or expertise might surface on a specific proposal from the community at large.
Many citizens can and should have a view – informed or not – in the first situation (e.g., should we adopt dedicated Māori seats?). Far fewer have a significant contribution to make in the latter (e.g., should we build a groyne vs a seawall?).
We need more nuanced ‘engagement’ strategies that are better suited to the outcome sought. In devising these, both sides of the table must be frank about realities like the level of civic education amongst the public (less impressive than our kids’ math scores) and what opportunity for improving a given decision outcome actually exists.
If it is general opinion councils want, we need something more representative than submissions – polls of various kinds being the most obvious (including as part of webcasts), but also a matter of councillors behaving as politicians – i.e., keeping their ears to the ground, engaging systematically with their constituents, and then leading. If it is policy insight that’s needed, councils should double-down on identifying and tapping into relevant expertise, experience and capacities in the community, targeting on a case-bycase basis. This includes, but is more than standard ‘stakeholder’ engagement, which is often still a box-ticking exercise that reaches out to the same rote circle of voices.
Our region should have a talent inventory of HB experts, ready to be tapped when their insights might be useful. The objective here is getting informed, independent intelligence, not Facebook ‘advice’.
From its perspective, the public should expect: 1) total transparency; 2) trusted listeners; 3) timely decision-making.
Transparency – all the facts, analyses and assumptions driving public decisions must be on the table in full view. Our councils have taken an important step by opening their ‘workshops’, where all pertinent information is on display as councillors and staff struggle to find their way. Transparency is critical to building civic knowledge, trust in decision-making and political permission to take action. Trust is more important than participation.
Trusted listeners – this is a cultural challenge for our councils. From my experience as a councillor and editor, complaints about unresponsive or dismissive staff (and councillors) far outweigh praise that ‘they actually listened’. It is councillors and their chief executives who must drive a genuinely listening culture. Hastings-based Ask Your Team might have some useful advice on lifting councils’ listening quotient.
Timely decision-making – this region faces urgent decisions about hugely important choices. Our elected officials need to take action in our best interest, sooner not later, and with courage. Assuming the transparency and trusted listeners just described, and more constructive forms of engagement, the rest of us need to let them get on with the job we selected them to do, while remaining vigilant.
We elect, they lead. And if they drop the ball, we drop them at the ballot. That’s the bottom line of accountability. That’s what democracy is ultimately about, not weighing submissions by the pound.
Sorry, I just couldn’t suppress this rant.
Enjoy the magazine!
Tom has been a two-term HB Regional Councillor. His past includes the Carter White House, building Ted Turner’s first philanthropic organisation, doing heaps of marketing consulting for major non-profits and corporates.
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The Buzz Lizzie Russell
BLOSSOM QUEEN
LYN MACKIE, ARTS INC. HERETAUNGA
Lyn Mackie from Arts Inc. Heretaunga leads the magic and the mahi behind the iconic Hastings Blossom Parade. Since its early days (kicking off in 1950) of painstakingly ornate floats gliding through the CBD to the multicultural carnival-like atmosphere of more recent times, the Blossom Parade has become a joyful herald of spring.
This is Lyn’s 26th year working on the parade and she points out, many others have been instrumental in creating this lively, inclusive event. From David Fine, who helped resurrect it after its hiatus to Te Rangi Huata, who has been involved for as long as Lyn has, it’s been a collaborative community project and a labour of love. Lyn makes special mention of Marita McCormick-Duncan, her trusty and supportive offsider who makes a huge contribution too.
Lyn says what she loves most about the Blossom Parade is the way the community comes together with noise and fun and colour to make something that absolutely everyone can enjoy.
Thank you, Lyn and team. And welcome everyone, to spring!
The Blossom Parade is on Saturday, September 21 (commencing at 1pm, with prizegiving at 3pm) and this year the theme is ‘Regeneration: Spring Back Hastings!’
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Lyn Mackie with flowers by Pom Pom Florals, 212 Heretaunga Street East. Photo: Florence Charvin
PRINCIPAL PARTNER
In this series, we cast a little BayBuzz light on local treasures –spots you might need reminding about, places to explore in our own resilient, beautiful backyard. This issue, we walk Te Mata Peak at sunrise.
Photos by Florence Charvin
Early morning in our shared backyard. We’re up before the birds, but not before the other walkers, the runners, their four-legged friends and the two-wheeling pedallers.
It’s early spring so it’s brisk. The sharp air has us rubbing our hands together for a little warmth as we climb, closer to the top, closer to the sunrise. A layer of cloud lifts and breaks apart, making way for the morning.
A familiar face on his regular run. Tourists capturing the new light. We breathe in deeply, taking in the fresh day, and look south to those majestic ridges and dips, shadows and glow. North to the jut of one city, then the grid of another. The scoop of the bay. The loose, somehow reassuring, wander of the Tukituki.
The Buzz Lizzie Russell
The Buzz
Lizzie Russell
Richard Brimer’s 40 Vintages
When Richard Brimer had just finished his photography apprenticeship back in 1982 he found his way into a cellar job at Vidal in Hastings. This is
where he met life-long friends, and began his life-long love affair with the Hawke’s Bay wine industry. To chat with Richard is to realise he’s worked with everyone. The big players, the boutique growers, out on the vineyards and inside in the barrel halls.
He’s got hundreds of stories (some of them pretty colourful – it’s just as well he’s got such a kind heart!) and he’s captured every element of the multifaceted business of wine.
Now he’s staging an exhibition of his photographs, spanning the 40 vintages
he’s worked, shot, and delighted in. And that’s how the collection of photographs feels, like a conversation with Richard, and in turn a conversation with our wine sector. Expect to taste sweet and layered memories in a complex and balanced blend that
brings together the often wry, dry characters of our wine world.
The exhibition at Arts Inc. Heretaunga in Russell Street, Hastings opens on October 12 and will be supported by a series of live music and wine events. Find all the details at artsinc.co.nz
Photo: Florence Charvin
CLIMATE CRISIS UPDATE
As usual, we look at the latest evolution of climate crisis issues from planet scale to here in Hawke’s Bay, including the latest polling results on how well New Zealanders believe we are coping with climate change.
The planet
If there’s any surprise here, it is the pace of global warming intensification. We’re on a record hot streak. As I write, 22 July was the hottest day in recorded history globally, at 17.15C –the third time that month the previous record was surpassed. The planet has set heat records for 13 straight months. In the last days of July, more that 1,600 places around the globe had tied or broken heat records. Oceans have been breaking heat records for 15 consecutive months.
A recent UN Report estimates 2.4 billion workers are exposed to excessive heat, resulting in 22.8 million non-fatal injuries and 18,970 deaths annually. A World Economic Forum report noted that 62,000 deaths were attributed to the European heatwave between May and September 2022. In the US, health and safety rules are now being considered to protect workers from working in unsafe heat conditions.
The effect of this steadily rising temperature is that we have now had increases at or above the 1.5C target
Monthly global temperatures
Temperature data from July 1950 to June 2024 2.0°
July 1990June 1991
July 2023June 2024
July 2020June 2021
July 1950June 1951
0.0°
that has been internationally accepted as the threshold for avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
Experts at climate monitor NASA in the US estimate that about three-quarters of all global agricultural land is vulnerable to substantial climate disruptions.
An opinion piece in the NY Times recently observed:
“Farming may look intuitively like a climate-friendly undertaking, but it remains a stubborn carbon problem — and now looks increasingly likely to outlast the other, more obvious parts of the decarbonization challenge.
“We have long conceptualized climate change as an industrial crisis, to be solved through a new and green industrial revolution. But in a few decades, we may find ourselves having solved the industrial problems of warming, only to be confronted instead by a persistent set of challenges that seem pre-modern by comparison — how to extract more calories from less land and how to do so without bankrupting the earth and its soils along the way.”
That’s the big picture. Where does New Zealand fit in as a primary production economy?
New Zealand
The latest figures from Stats NZ show a 0.5% increase in emissions in the year to March 2024, the first annual rise since 2019.
But the government seems determined to avoid biting the bullet on emissions, particularly with respect to farm and transportation emissions.
It has ended ‘clean car’ purchase incentives, effectively halting what was impressive growth in EV sales, while also reducing fuel efficiency standards. And it has stretched the timetable for mandating farm emissions pricing or reductions.
Moreover, the government is pressing to reinstate new offshore oil and gas exploration, in direct contradiction of UN and International Energy Agency policy preferences. The ban reversal would load an additional 14.2 million tonnes of emissions into the emissions budgets stretching out to 2035.
Meanwhile, the NZ science community is alarmed that staff cuts at NIWA and GNS, both critically involved in understanding NZ’s future climate scenarios, will cripple that essential prediction work, from heat and rainfall to coastal and river flooding impacts. As required by the Climate Change
Response (Zero Carbon) Act, the government recently issued for consultation its proposed Emissions Reduction Plan for the 2026-30 window. The plan would allow more emissions than the previous government’s proposal and would miss NZ’s legislatively-set net zero commitments for 2035 and 2050.
Its plan bets entirely on a “technology-led approach” says Climate Minister Simon Watts, backed by heavy reliance on forestry offsets under a revised Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The government says it wants to encourage much greater private investment in emissions reduction in areas like renewables and carbon capture (i.e., direct removal and storage of carbon emissions).
Meantime, the Climate Change Commission has released its first monitoring report since the Zero Carbon Act came into effect.
The report is critical of the government’s climate policies and strategies, citing an over-reliance on the Emissions Trading Scheme and forestry offsets as opposed to reductions in emissions at their source, “a failure to adopt adequate transport emissions reductions policies”, and insufficient cuts in agricultural emissions. It also notes concern as
But the government seems determined to avoid biting the bullet on emissions, particularly with respect to farm and transportation emissions.
to whether NZ would be on track to meet its emission reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Commission Chair Dr Rod Carr comments: “The areas that could have the biggest impact for driving down emissions are in decarbonising electricity supply, decarbonising industry, reducing on-farm emissions, adopting low and zero-emissions vehicles, and land use change to forestry.”
In case NZ farmers think they’re being pressed too hard, they should consider Denmark, where agriculture will contribute a 40% share of emissions in 2030. Denmark devotes 61% of its 40 thousand km2 to agriculture, while NZ devotes 50% of 263 thousand km2 square kilometers; but Denmark’s GDP is 61% higher.
Denmark has a legally binding 2030 target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 70% from 1990 levels. There, farm emissions will be taxed at around NZ$70 per tonne of emissions from 2030. They’ll get a 60% tax credit against the payments, which will be used to support farmers’ emissions reduction efforts.
Emissions reductions aside, recommendations are soon expected on climate adaptation. On 5 September, the Parliamentary Finance and Expenditure Joint Committee is expected to recommend strategies for mitigating the impact of climate change, including coastal protection and retreat, and the funding of such measures.
Meantime, the NZ Climate Commission in August gave its assessment of NZ climate adaptation planning to date, which it termed “insufficiently addressed”. “The Commission finds limited evidence that the first national adaptation plan is driving adaptation at the scale or pace needed.” Chair Dr Rod Carr urged much greater urgency: “It’s never too late to start, and the sooner we do, the
more money we will save and the more heartache we will avoid. It can provide great returns on investment that last a long time.”
Heavyweight business players like the Sustainable Business Council and the Climate Leaders Coalition argue for gross emissions reductions, not just offsets, and above all policy/regulatory certainty. Instead what looks likely is major uncertainty, as this government backtracks on Labour initiatives that Labour promises to restore at its next opportunity.
What does the New Zealand public think about all this?
A major survey was recently completed by Ipsos for the NZ insurance industry.
Fully 72% of respondents said climate change was an important issue to them personally, with 61% saying they have become more concerned in recent years. And 83% say the government is responsible for action on climate change, with 54% saying they are most responsible (as compared to local government, business, or individuals). However, only 32% say NZ’s response to climate is on the right track – 27% say actions the government has taken are good; 40% say poor.
Hawke’s Bay
Several of the questions in the Ipsos survey (and the Commission’s findings) raise issues of consequence to our region.
Although 68% of respondents say local governments are responsible for action on climate change, only 3% say they are most responsible.
That said, the survey indicates a number of key actions by local councils are strongly supported:
• 85% support requiring new buildings to meet higher resilience standards;
• 83% say councils should continually improve their and their community’s understanding of climate hazards;
• 82% say councils should only plan to use land recognised as being of low risk of climate hazards for housing developments;
• 78% support councils using funds to help build infrastructure that reduces the impact of climate hazards.
These are issues now on the table in Hawke’s Bay.
The Napier-Hastings Future Development Strategy, negotiated by NCC, HDC and the Regional Council, will soon be presented for public consultation. This strategy will indicate
PRINCIPAL PARTNER
where the 16,320 additional homes (as well as 230 hectares for commercial and industrial expansion) required over the next 30 years will be located. Presumably climate risk will be a factor.
Likewise, the Coastal Protection Strategy, in development for years by the same three councils, is finally coming to a head. From Clifton to Tangoio a range of options from natural protection to hard engineering to managed retreat have been devised and provisionally priced. This strategy, including who will pay, will also require public consultation, scheduled for early 2025.
Of course the Regional Council would note that much of its planned work is in large part addressing climate change, most notably enhanced flood protection and Land for Life (which envisions substantial tree cover).
Finally, we have the Joint Committee on Climate Action, representing our five councils and iwi. As of its 26 August meeting, the committee is chaired by HBRC Councillor Xan Harding (formerly by HBRC Chair Hinewai Ormsby) and has been slowly developing sector by sector recommendations for both emissions mitigation and climate impact adaptation. It would do well to embrace the Climate Commission’s adaptation report (available here).
With a budget slightly over $600,000 for the next three years, the committee recently endorsed workstreams addressing regional risk assessment (given highest priority and about ten years overdue), identifying and ‘enabling’ local climate action, community knowledge building and monitoring regional progress.
HBRC’s chief staffer supporting this work is newly appointed Amberley Gibson, Climate Change Lead Strategic Adviser, who has worked previously on climate issues at the Ministry for the Environment. Not a ‘Climate Ambassador’, this role is more internally focussed. Hopefully it involves managing actual projects as opposed to simply preparing Joint Committee paperwork. We’ll see at the 24 November meeting of the Joint Committee.
BayBuzz energy and climate reporting is sponsored by Unison in support of independent local journalism.
A Creative Writing Competition
Can you express yourself in 20 words or less?
Join ‘The Expression Project’ for the chance to have your words displayed as window art in Hastings City. Whether it’s thoughtful, beautiful, funny or personal - express your thoughts on Hastings in this creative writing challenge.
Competition open Monday 2nd - Sunday 22nd September 2024.
HRT CRISIS
Hawke’s Bay doctor campaigns for change amid acute shortages
Good morning,
I am contacting you as I am deeply concerned about the lack of HRT in our country. As a menopausal woman I can tell you, to turn up to get your much-needed medicine only to find out it’s not available is outrageous!
It’s not a rare disease. Millions of women use HRT to help with menopausal symptoms… If a Covid-19 vaccine patent can be shared among companies to increase supply, surely the same can happen for HRT.
I would like to know what you are doing to fix this? We rely on this medicine to live healthy, ’normal’ lives – it’s an utterly awful time of life for women’s health.
Signed, an angry, disappointed menopausal woman
Dr
Story by Abby Beswick
Photos Florence Charvin
Kelly Brown is a 52-year-old mum from Napier. She’s also one of thousands of Kiwi women who uses Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in the form of estrogen patches to cope with the symptoms of menopause. Brown wrote the letter reproduced below to New Zealand’s drug buying agency Pharmac in June, out of absolute frustration she could no longer regularly access her prescribed HRT.
A shortage of HRT started as far back as 2020, as stocks declined in New Zealand and around the world, but in recent months the situation has become acute. Specifically, the shortage relates to estradiol patches – a stick-on patch that contains a hormone called estradiol. Estradiol patches are also known as HRT or estrogen patches.
Estrogen patches are applied to the skin and release hormones into the body during perimenopause (the transition to menopause) and menopause. The HRT shortage, which is due to continue until at least 2025, has left women vulnerable to the return of a raft of psychological and physical symptoms, and in the most extreme cases, suicidal.
Like so many other women, Brown experienced symptoms that are often overlooked or written off as “mum fatigue”. There was the poor sleep, brain fog and the mood swings that could quickly escalate to anger. “I just thought I’m an older mum – I’m in my late 40s,” she says. Then the hot flushes started. “I’d be in a meeting and I would get this horrible sensation. it would go from my toes all the way up to my head and all I could think was ‘oh my god, can anyone else see what I’m feeling?’.”
She went to see her GP and started using estrogen patches, combined with progesterone tablets to regulate her hormones. The medicine has had a significant impact on Brown’s day-today life. “The hot flushes went, I felt brighter, I had more energy... It definitely was pretty life-altering for me.”
What is HRT?
Menopause starts when a woman hasn’t had a period for 12 months, and the years leading up to this are perimenopause, when the body is producing fewer hormones. The first clues of perimenopause are often psychological and can come 10-12 years before your last menstrual period, so it’s completely reasonable for a woman to begin perimenopause in their 30s. As a woman’s body gets close to releasing its last eggs it is desperately trying to produce estrogen, causing hormone levels to surge and drop.
Perimenopause is the most emotionally and physically challenging time of a woman’s life because her hormones change significantly, causing marked symptoms. Depression, anxiety, brain fog, mood changes, pain, sleep problems, tinnitus, itchy skin, hot flushes, bladder infections and dry eyes are all common symptoms.
HRT is used to treat these symptoms and there are several different types available, including pills, gels and patches.
Estrogen patches, where the hormone is delivered via the skin (transdermally) is acknowledged as the safest form of estrogen. In New Zealand it’s also the most widely prescribed, as it’s the only transdermal estradiol patch that’s funded.
These small adhesive patches are applied to the lower stomach or top of the buttocks, where they release hormones through the skin and into the bloodstream. The patches can improve life significantly for women, says Dr Samantha Newman, who is a GP and runs a clinic in Napier specialising in women’s health.
OPPOSITE:
Samantha Newman, specialist women’s GP
Kelly Brown and her letter below
Not just a nice-to-have There are no official figures, but an estimated 80,000 people in New Zealand use estradiol patches. In addition to perimenopausal and menopausal women, it is also used by the transgender community and for a range of other conditions such as hormonal migraines and osteoporosis.
Traditionally, women were often told they couldn’t go on HRT until they’d had 12 months without a period. Even then, HRT was used to treat hot flushes only and for the shortest amount of time, at the lowest possible dose. But that view simply isn’t correct, says Newman.
In fact, anxiety is one of the most common symptoms of perimenopause. “For many people who use them it is a lifesaving medication. It is not a lifestyle choice.”
Often women have been on a long journey to even start HRT because they didn’t realise their symptoms were perimenopause or menopause, GPs missed the symptoms, or they were misdiagnosed.
Brown can relate, saying her own
“For many people who use them it is a lifesaving medication. It is not a lifestyle choice.”
Dr Samantha Newman
journey to HRT took some time. She didn’t know she was in perimenopause as the changes were incremental and she blamed it on getting older, which she now knows wasn’t true – “Age does not stop you from being able to deal with what life hands you.”
She works hard to keep herself as fit and healthy as possible – exercises an hour a day, eats a keto diet, and limits her alcohol intake. But Brown can’t control her hormones without medication. HRT has made a “massive difference” in her life, she says. Menopause is a medical condition that needs to be taken seriously, says Brown.
What’s behind the shortage?
Demand for HRT has increased massively. In the 2020/21 financial year the annual volume of patches used in New Zealand was 2.7 million. Three years later, the figure is 4.04 million, and demand is expected to keep growing. Contributing to this is an increase in education about menopause, with more women starting HRT younger and using it for longer.
There are also manufacturing and transport problems. These include unspecified ‘manufacturing issues’, supply-chain issues with soybean products, not enough factory development and shipping problems.
Estrogen patches are in short supply worldwide, but it’s more marked in New Zealand because there are no other funded options of transdermal estradiol. Because stocks are limited, suppliers of different brands of patches are rationing them out to pharmacies to try and keep distribution fair. However, it means when a woman turns up to her pharmacy her usual patch might not be available or in her prescribed strength.
When questioned for this article, Pharmac referred BayBuzz to their website. It says they recognise the supply of estradiol patches is very limited and availability can change rapidly and varies around the country. “We want to acknowledge the stress this supply issue may be causing. We are taking every measure to ensure that people can continue to access this treatment,” the website says.
However, healthcare specialists say Pharmac was slow to act when it knew there were supply problems with estradiol patches and failed to ensure enough alternatives were available.
Inconsistent supply, navigating alternatives
Since the shortage began, Newman has received hundreds of prescription requests from patients desperately trying to access their HRT. When those requests first started coming in, Newman would call pharmacies to get patients their medication – some driving up to 40 minutes to different pharmacies to get it. Until recently she was getting 10-20 requests for repeat prescriptions a day.
Patients have been forced to use patches that differ from their usual brand because it’s all that’s available, which they might react differently to. Sometimes women have to cut patches to get their correct dose because there’s only one strength available, pay extra for alternative options, or go without.
Anecdotally, the shortage has created something of an underground market, with women swapping
medication to get their usual prescription. Some women are registering with more than one doctor to get multiple prescriptions and stock up on supplies, because they’re fearful of running out.
For some patch users the shortage has brought back debilitating mental, emotional and physical symptoms. They are struggling to work, sleep, having hot flushes, and have started taking antidepressants again, and for the women who were suicidal before starting HRT, they are terrified of returning to that place.
For Brown, the thought of getting her symptoms back is distressing. At the beginning of this year she noticed it was getting harder to access her prescription. Previously she renewed her prescription every three months, but that changed to a maximum of one month’s supply. Sometimes the pharmacist could only offer whatever patches were available, meaning Brown would get a different brand she wasn’t used to. Often she would be at the pharmacy before 8am to try and get her prescribed patches “because once they run out of their daily supply they run out”. Brown says she’s been lucky that for the most part she’s been able to get her prescribed patches, despite the shortage. But not everyone has been so fortunate.
There are other options available, including estradiol gels. These are not funded and cost $40-$60 per bottle, on top of seeing a GP to get the prescription. This can be a good option for some patients, offering a more consistent supply while getting the continued benefits of estrogen. However,
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a lot of healthcare providers, GPs and pharmacists aren’t comfortable prescribing and dispensing the gels because they’re not familiar with how it’s used, says Newman. It’s often left patients doing their own research to find other options.
On its website, Pharmac says it has been sourcing alternative brands of patches and is consulting on funding estradiol gel, Estrogel. If the proposal goes ahead, this would be available from November.
Impact
Generally patients have been really understanding, says pharmacist and owner of Gilmours Pharmacy in Havelock North, Liz Dixon. But it’s a difficult time for patients, pharmacists and everyone in the supply chain, who has been impacted by shortage.
Gilmours has 270 patients who use estrogen patches and that number will continue to grow, says Dixon. At times, frustrated women come into the pharmacy to get their patches, but the pharmacy can’t always source them. “For some people that’s dropping them off a cliff. Because you’ve finally got stable, you have anxiety around making sure you stay on a good medication that works for you,” she says.
Dixon, who has been a pharmacist for 35 years, says the shortage
has put pressure on frontline staff at the counter. “You understand these women are anxious because you know they need the estrogen.” Dixon considers herself lucky to have fantastic staff who are good at calming down customers when needed. Often though, it takes a pharmacist to go out and assist the patient, which disrupts their workflow.
Estradiol patches are funded for a maximum of two patches per week. If pharmacies can only make up this dose by using a combination of two patches of different strengths, the patient must pay the extra cost.
For pharmacies, staff are spending extra time educating patients about the evolving changes, alternative options and creating labels to teach them how to cut patches to get the right strength – all
“For some people that’s dropping them off a cliff. Because you’ve finally got stable, you have anxiety around making sure you stay on a good medication that works for you, Liz Dixon, Pharmacist
unpaid. Pharmacies gets a 3.5% markup on the cost of medication and around $4-$5 for dispensing it, says Dixon. “We’re probably in negative equity for sure, managing estrogen patches.” There are other impacts on the supply chain: GPs spending more time seeing returning patients and sending new prescriptions, pharmacists ringing wholesalers asking for medication to be released, wholesalers under huge pressure because every pharmacy is asking the same thing. “So it just keeps on going down the line.”
Campaigning for change
Newman says she feels a responsibility to stand up for her patients who desperately need a consistent supply of HRT. “For those who estradiol has given them their life back, or for those who
got it to stop them falling off the cliff.”
Deeply concerned about the impact, Newman created a survey in June to gather data from HRT users around the country. More than 2000 women responded, with 95% saying they were experiencing difficulties as a result of the shortages. Some 84% reported a negative impact on their emotional wellbeing and 65% on their physical health. Of the respondents, 33% said HRT had enabled them to reduce or stop using pain medication and 17 % to reduce or stop using antidepressants. Respondents said being unable to consistently access HRT has left them struggling with anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms, making it hard for them to function on a daily basis.
Seeing the lack of education about the shortage for patients, pharmacies and practitioners, Newman also created a leaflet. This has been broadly used in Hawke’s Bay to help people navigate the changing situation and give patients the best chance of accessing what they need.
Newman has also teamed up with Director of Contentment PR & Communications Fiona Fraser, who is providing PR assistance pro bono. Fraser, an HRT user herself, wanted
to help get media attention on the situation – “To raise the profile of the issue and try and get some change at a national level.”
She understands first-hand the positive flow-on effects for users and how much they can suffer without it. “I know what can happen to your body when you suddenly reduce the dose. It’s not pretty,” says Fraser.
The duo believe Pharmac was slow to act and the government should have managed the shortage better. “I’m amazed and astounded that this country hasn’t leapt on this medication to help keep women out of hospitals, to keep them away from doctors,” says Fraser. She wants to see a national campaign providing relevant information to users.
Women need more options available in New Zealand so they can choose what kind of patch or gel they want and have cost barriers removed, says Newman. “I think if you look at it from a public health perspective, 50% have had to spend additional money on getting medication which is not affordable for many people.”
She also wants more research and education on hormone treatment, greater funding for women’s health,
“I think if you look at it from a public health perspective, 50% have had to spend additional money on getting medication which is not affordable for many people.”
Dr Samantha Newman
support for users of hormones and equity for Māori.
Newman is lobbying David Seymour, as the Associate Minister of Health (Pharmac) to highlight the impact of the shortages and to stress the crucial importance of this medicine.
Royston Hospital is pleased to sponsor robust examination of health issues in Hawke’s Bay. This reporting is prepared by BayBuzz. Any editorial views expressed are those of the BayBuzz team.
Nimble thinking nursing
At Royston Hospital, we couldn’t be prouder of our exceptionally talented team – and the backbone of that team is our wonderful nurses.
Like us, they are committed to continuing excellence in the health and wellbeing of the people in our care. That’s why we’d like to introduce you to Emma Drysdale, one of our highly skilled surgical ward nurses at Royston Hospital, who – alongside the diversity and demands of her role – speaks about her pride in being a nurse.
royston.co.nz
“Nursing is about much more than being alert and caring, it’s about developing a real intuition for a patient’s needs and trying to anticipate those.”
Emma Drysdale Royston Hospital Nurse
SWITCHED ON
Story by Tom Belford
Photos by Florence Charvin
When it comes to numbers and goals, the future of electricity in New Zealand is huge, as is the challenge to our hometown electricity provider, Unison.
Most of us think of Unison and its 420 HB-based employees simply as the company that runs the wires and cables delivering electricity to our homes and businesses. However, the ‘Unison Group’ includes a number of other service and manufacturing companies aligned with its electricity expertise. We’ll get to the ramifications of that later.
New Zealand can achieve nearly 100% renewable electricity by 2030, with 4.3 million EVs on the road by 2050. And if we reach that goal, we will save a staggering 22 million tonnes of CO2e annually by 2050 – this would represent 70% of the total transport savings required to be net zero carbon in 2050.
But this will require a $71 billion investment in New Zealand’s electricity distribution infrastructure by 2050, with $22 billion of that coming in the remainder of this decade.
And important climate and sustainability goals aside, in the ‘here and now’ focus of our daily lives, as consumers we want energy security, which Unison describes as, “Ensuring reliable
and affordable access to energy, ensuring resilience against shocks and disruptions, and the ability to meet current and future demand”.
Energy security and energy sustainability must be achieved alongside energy equity – keeping electricity available to all at a fair, affordable price.
How to achieve each of the elements of what Unison calls ‘The Energy Trilemma’ is embedded in the company’s 274-page 2024-34 Regulatory Asset Management Plan (RAMP), recently released, with the somewhat sexier moniker ... Powering Thriving Regions
For Unison in Hawke’s Bay alone, $750 million will be invested over the next ten years, with $61.9 million in 2024/25. All ultimately paid for by electricity consumers. RAMP describes every project over $250,000 ... dozens of them, with tantalizing names like ‘new 11kV Fernhill Feeder’, each with a purpose description, multiple solution options, with varying advantages/disadvantages and costs. Seven pages on caring for Unison’s 66,000 poles.
Hopefully HBRC’s new flood protection plans will be so complete. To say nothing of our district councils’ water infrastructure plans.
While full of reader-numbing technical detail, the RAMP also includes illuminating discussions of the assumptions and trends that shape Unison’s planning around investments that have asset lives of up to 80 years – from climate change and environmental goals to demographic changes and worker shortages to government policies, AI, technology change and consumer habits. In short, Unison’s view of the world in which it must operate over the next decade and beyond. Alongside risk assessments and detailed performance reporting.
It would be welcome to see such comprehensive contextual thinking on the part of our (5) councils and our Regional Economic Development Agency.
BayBuzz sat down with two key principals at Unison – Jason Larkin (General Manager Commercial & Regulatory) and Gaganpreet Chadha (General Manager Networks & Operations) – to help distill the key takeaways from the strategy.
Recovery
Probably uppermost in most minds in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle is the simple question: Is our electricity supply more protected and secure today than it was then? How?
Of course the major power vulnerability exposed by Gabrielle was the flooding of the Transpower-owned Redclyffe substation, the major entry point for electricity into the region.
Transpower, with Unison at the table and concurring, has adopted an ‘uplift’ strategy aimed at repositioning electrical gear higher above current ground level, with further margin to spare in the event of future flooding. This work is just starting. Jason Larkin emphasises Unison’s ongoing engagement with Transpower to keep this partner “on focus”.
Nevertheless, when asked what Unison saw as the biggest vulnerability were a Gabrielle-scale event to re-occur next February, Larkin identified the Redclyffe facility, given that Transpower’s high voltage resilience work will not be completed until 2027. However, other changes completed would ensure much quicker restoration of 110v power to the community – “within hours”, says Larkin. With Redclyffe lifted, “after 2027 we shouldn’t see any flood having the impact of disrupting electricity supply to the region we saw [from Gabrielle],” says Gaganpreet Chadha.
He adds that actually mobilising the Unison workforce during such an
emergency would remain problematic if confronted again by communications and transport issues – road blockages, bridges out. “We ensure we are prepared and have the plans and resources to respond to any emergency; however, we are also dependent on other infrastructure and services”.
Unison says it has “frequent relationship meetings” with Transpower, adding: “Unison has the opportunity to provide input into any proposed mitigations that will reduce the likelihood and consequences of future GXP (Grid Exit Point) outages.” My fingers are crossed.
Unison has made considerable progress with its own resilience improvement, which would – Larkin and Chadha confirm – limit any future substation flooding outages to hours as opposed to days or weeks.
Larkin points to several projects aimed at building more resilience in the delivery system, with interim improvements begun immediately after the disaster. For example, the Awatoto substation was flooded and a redesigned substation will be relocated to an area with more flood protection ($12 million); meantime, the existing control electronics have been lifted six metres above ground. Likewise with new substations replacing those flooded in Esk Zone ($5 million) and Tutira ($5 million). Power lines crossing rivers have been moved or made more resilient. In addition, work underway to bolster power coming into our region from the south will be
completed in 6-9 months, as a further hedge against reliance on Redclyffe.
A key project underway to enable better response is institutionalising a comprehensive register of critical sites connected to Unison’s electrical network. The Register will include emergency management organisations like New Zealand Police, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM), St John New Zealand; hospitals and large aged care facilities; air and seaports; lifeline utility infrastructure like three waters installations, telecommunication, fuel depots, and large industrial customers.
The RAMP devotes a chapter to risk assessment – who is responsible; how risk is identified, weighed and responded to; and which risk averting investment priorities are given priority.
An interesting discussion is provided of ‘High Impact Low Probability’ (HILP) or Extreme Events. With funds and expenditure constrained by regulation, this involves weighing investments mitigating against risks with lower consequence but higher likelihood, against investments protecting against HILP events both from natural hazards and other incidents that could lead to major asset system failures as experienced in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle.
In its discussion of risks from natural hazards, it is fair to say that earthquakes rank highest in terms of network vulnerability. Unison comments: “All of Unison’s zone substation buildings have been seismically strengthened to mitigate potential risks.” And: “Unison’s coastal network would be significantly impacted by either a nearsource, or distant-sourced tsunami. Due to the uncertain impact and level of inundation a tsunami may have, mitigating action plans currently focus on reducing potential risks to employees, and the public through evacuation of staff and the making safe of electrical equipment.”
Unison has planned for any compromise of its earthquake-protected Omahu Road headquarters. “Unison has constructed a purpose built, level four compliant, AOC (Alternative Operation Centre) adjacent to its Arataki Substation in Havelock North. This building provides a comprehensive disaster response facility capable of housing all network operational and other critical business functions.”
Turning to extreme weather, Unison reports: “The significant impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle and other well
Gaganpreet Chadha (General Manager Networks & Operations) and Jason Larkin (General Manager Commercial & Regulatory)
Of course the major power vulnerability exposed by Gabrielle was the flooding of the Transpower-owned Redclyffe substation, the major entry point for electricity into the region.
documented events on infrastructure and local communities, both domestically and overseas, is testament to an increasing threat of extreme weather events. There is acknowledgement that the impacts of climate change are likely to affect the future frequency and severity of these type of events. Consequently, Unison is engaging with a number of national working groups to better understand the implications of climate change, and what mitigations or adaption strategies will be required to lessen the impact on the business. This includes the longer-term impacts of sea level rise on Unison’s asset portfolio.”
And finally, “Unison understands its obligations as a lifeline utility and is taking steps to increase its engagement and participation with local lifeline groups including representation on the Hawke’s Bay Engineering Lifelines Executive Committee.”
Sustainability
Assuming our electricity supply is more secure, what further upgrades or changes does Unison plan to meet increased demand and sustainability goals?
A key trend Unison must address is decentralisation of the electricity system. The RAMP comments: “Technologies such as solar photovoltaic cells and batteries have the potential to reshape the electricity industry if they reach a level of efficiency that makes them complementary, or even a credible alternative, to centralised generation, transmission, and distribution. Unison’s research into these technologies strongly suggests that they will have an impact on the business, but that material uptake will occur in the latter half or beyond the planning period of the AMP within Unison’s network footprint.
“Most of the assets which will be installed during the ten-year planning period will however last far beyond that time (some assets having a life of up to 80 years). It is therefore essential that
the asset investment decisions being made now consider the prospect of future uptake of DER (Distributed energy resources, e.g. solar, EVs, batteries).”
Anticipating growth in DER, where users can become suppliers and have more direct/smart control over their power demand and storage, requires rethinking and retooling many ‘one way’ (i.e., electricity flowing only out to users) aspects of the Unison electricity system. Too technical for this article, but a major focus of future network planning.
In the meantime, Unison’s policy is “to support the objectives of customers wishing to utilise Distributed Generation by ensuring any potential detrimental effects are prevented or mitigated.”
As electricity users in the region can become suppliers to the local grid (e.g. a solar farm as described in Tess Redgrave’s article), Unison must purchase their electricity, assuming technical specs are met. Unison added 767 solar or distributed generation customers to its Hawke’s Bay network in the last year – “steady, not exponential growth” – now totalling around 3,000 installations, and is seeing more interest in larger scale projects.
[Solar aside, Unison will soon be adding over 100MW of geothermal power to its network from Taupo facilities. The new Harapaki wind farm on the Napier-TaupŌ Road, capable of powering 70,000 homes, must feed into the Transpower grid, meaning that electricity can go anywhere in the system.]
Unison works closely with councils’ planners to anticipate development growth, be that a sub-division like Iona or Irongate industrial expansion.
A major driver of HB’s expected demand for more electricity will be residential growth (8,200 more homes in next ten years) compounded by consumers’ increasing adoption of electricity-driven efficient heating, hot water systems, smart appliances, EVs and solar energy. A typical project to address residential growth would be $7 million for upgrading cables and substations serving new sub-divisions in Havelock North and Arataki.
Consumer use of electricity is the toughest to keep on top of, says Chadha. Taking EVs for example, incentive policies can change pace of adoption and when consumers actually charge their vehicles could create peak loading issues that require expensive added system capacity. On the other hand, better home insulation reduces demand.
Government Health + Education Food Processing Industrial
Department of Corrections Hawke’s Bay District Health Board
Napier City Council
Hastings District Council
Businesses will require growing capacity, needing another projected 490 hectares of industrial land. Such system expansions are paid for by the developers directly to Unison under price settings established by the Electricity Authority and overseen by the Commerce Commission.
And other businesses and institutions will embrace decarbonisation, transitioning in HB from gas-fired boilers. Unison is working with the region’s top 50 users of process heat to plot their conversion to electricity from gas.
As an example of anticipating growth on the business side, the Camberley substation will be rebuilt to meet the needs of the growing health care sector surrounding Omahu Road.
As BayBuzz has reported online, Unison will be deploying facilities modelled on its sustainability award-winning Windsor substation in Hastings. This facility won the ‘Low Carbon Future Award’ at the New Zealand Energy Excellence Awards in July 2022. It is 100% solar powered, with zero carbon emissions.
As another use of developing technology, Unison now uses aerial LiDAR imaging (and next, satellite imagery) to survey its entire power lines network to identify vegetation hazards (think trees and power lines, fire risk). This
Silver Fern Farms Beef Port of Napier
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Hawk Packaging New Zealand Woolscourers
Turners & Growers
Auckland Ravensdown Fertiliser Co-op
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McCain Foods NZ
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New Zealand
Hawke’s Bay Protein Bostock
Rockit
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preventive work, crucial to protecting rural supply, is handicapped by inadequate regulation of tree owners in Unison’s view, and has previously been a time and labour-intensive process with built-in human inconsistencies.
Cost and pricing
So, how does all this get paid for?
Unison recently announced its dividend payment to the HB Power Consumers Trust would be $17.25 million, up from $15.8 million the previous two years. Where does this dividend come from?
Unison revenue of $359.9 million has two main sources – charges paid by retail electricity marketers (like Contact, etc) which are strictly regulated, and unregulated earnings from the following separate businesses: Unison Contracting Services (offers specialist contracting services), ETEL (the largest transformer manufacturing company in NZ), RPS Switchgear (specialises in custom switchgear), and Pringle Beleski and Associates (PBA, provides high voltage expertise).
You pay the regulated chunk through your preferred retailer.
In Napier the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour (kWh) is 33.75 cents (of which the energy cost is 21.61 and the line fee is 12.14) compared to 40.62 cents in Waipukurau (where the energy cost is 20.89 and the line fee is 19.73 cents). The NZ average total cost per kWh is 33.61 cents (average line fee 11.89 cents). From there, your retail bill of course depends on how much electricity you use and when, with all sorts of plans available from over a dozen retailers.
The line component cost (Unison’s revenue) depends on factors like
What does your power bill pay for?
population density, distance from power station, terrain, extent of commercial/industrial users.
Demand and growth projections like those in this RAMP are used by the Commerce Commission to approve regulated expenditure plans and set the price Unison can charge retailers, reflecting cost of current lines service, reasonable investments in system growth and improvements, and a stipulated profit margin. That margin is currently set at 4.57%.
Distribution businesses like Unison lobby their case to regulators. Under recent settings Unison’s operational costs have surpassed allowances due to inflation and increased capital spends.
New settings have just been issued, which will dictate revenue and prices, allowable expenditure, and service reliability for the five-year period beginning 1 April 2025. This included, to Unison’s relief, a 25% increase for all lines providers in allowed infrastructure investment in recognition of recovery and resilience needs generated by recent severe weather, extraordinary inflation pressure, interest rates, and accelerated electrification objectives.
“We’re comfortable with the plan,” says
Chadha, “but 35% would have been better to ensure investment keeps pace with growing demand, especially related to decarbonising transport and industry.”
Access to capital aside, Unison’s Chadha points out that the pace of investment is significantly constrained by people, both technical and field staff, to deliver the programme – ongoing labour shortages throughout the industry “and not just a NZ issue,” he adds. And to a lesser degree, supply bottlenecks for materials.
In any event, a substantial unregulated revenue growth opportunity for Unison comes from its subsidiary businesses. In its latest annual report, these businesses provided 24% ($28.1 million) of its total earnings (EBITDA), while regulated lines earnings were $87.4 million.
Although the unregulated business earnings can be plowed back into those businesses, used for new acquisitions and to reduce borrowing, they do not cross into the regulated lines business. And arguably this subsidiary revenue and profit is more directly important to HB consumers because it is the primary source of the HB Power Consumers Trust dividend.
Thomas Edison predicted: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” And nowadays, those who can’t afford portable generators!
Thomas Edison predicted: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” And nowadays, those who can’t afford portable generators!
Many of us give no further thought to our electricity than paying our bill, banking our Power Trust dividend and hurling an expletive when the power fails. But a lot happens behind that light switch ... and the Unison folks seem switched on.
That said, reflecting on the certainty of future severe weather and other challenges to our power system, it’s worth noting that Edison also said: “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”
SOLAR POWER FARMING
Story by Tess Redgrave
Photos by Florence Charvin
Research solar power farming, as I have been doing for the last few weeks, to get a grip on Hawke’s Bay’s embrace of solar, and you’ll soon hear the famous inventor Thomas Edison’s quote from the 1880s. “We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power!”
Edison would be pleased to hear solar power is now the world’s fastest-growing source of energy. According to the Economist in June 2024, solar currently provides 6% of the world’s electricity but, by the mid-2030s, solar cells will probably be the planet’s single biggest source of electricity.
At the same time, the world’s electricity needs are growing exponentially. Depending on who you talk to, New Zealand could need up to 120% more power generation than it has now, by 2050.
Solar energy at scale has taken off around the globe with huge solar farms in places like India, China and Egypt, as well as smaller ones in the European Union and the US. Everything from vegetable greenhouses, to berry orchards, salad plots and vineyards, and even to underwater shrimp farming in China is being grown successfully underneath photo-voltaic panels overseas.
New Zealand, by comparison, has been slower to embrace solar farming.
An 80 hectare farm Kohirā, in Kaitaia, with a flock of 170 sheep grazing beneath solar panels, was the first to begin successfully providing power to the NZ electricity market in February 2024. Meanwhile Lincoln University only recently announced plans to construct a four-hectare solar farm to explore how productive land could be optimised for high-value horticulture cropping while generating commercial-scale solar energy.
Nevertheless, NZ power-grid operator Transpower says there are 10,500MW of solar projects currently in their connection pipeline, and at different stages of the application process. That’s slightly more than the 10,000MW of already installed capacity of all generation types in NZ. About 140,0000 hectares of our land could go into solar farms in the next few years.
Hawke’s Bay
In Hawke’s Bay the hot spot for solar farm development is Ongaonga, where key ingredients are making the area a very attractive option. It has high sunshine hours, (one estimate puts that at 1,700 bright sunshine hours per year), limited shading from adjacent mountains, lower grade soils that aren’t irrigated. And importantly, land that is close to a substation to transport power to the National Grid. In Ongaonga’s case the nearby Waipawa Substation is just south of the township on Ongaonga Road.
Currently two big solar farms, spanning a total of nearly 400 hectares, are in process for Ongaonga. One of these is Auckland-based SkySolar Limited’s consented 152 hectare solar farm directly adjacent to the Waipawa sub-station. This is predicted to produce enough electricity to power 18,000 houses per annum, but the project has stalled with a major shareholder in liquidation. Cameron King, director of commercial projects and sales, told BayBuzz the company is now awaiting “final settlement with another international investor” ... “and then the solar farm will proceed”. SkySolar has had a presence in Ongaonga since 2019 when it installed an 80m long array of 160 solar panels on
“Solar has the potential for us to look at intergenerational farming businesses because of the lease term. It promises a greater return than what we are currently getting and we can farm the land with sheep.”
Duncan Holden
Fairfield Station, and then worked with another Ongaonga farmer on Wakarara Road to put in a 918-panel array.
By far the largest solar farm planned for Ongaonga, and indeed Hawke’s Bay, is a $150 million, 240 hectare farm being developed by Helios Energy Limited, an NZ company with international backing.
The Helios farm, incorporating an estimated 240,000 solar panels, is to be located 1.8 kms from the Waipawa substation. It aims to produce 100 megawatts of energy that will power 29,000 homes annually. The company has a resource consent lodged with CHB District Council, and if all goes to plan, the farm will be operating by the end of 2026.
To find out more about solar farming, I honed in on Helios, who provides a very good model of a solar farm on its website.
homes per year.”
Schlichting, on Zoom from Auckland along with the company’s Senior Environmental Planner Sarah Brooks, describes a solar farm as a bit like our artery system. “You have the individual panels that absorb energy from the sun and deliver electricity to inverters which convert the DC power into AC, and then this AC electricity goes to a site substation. Consider this the heart of the arterial system.”
The solar farm substation then dispatches the AC power via a transmission line to Transpower’s Waipawa substation – “call this the brain,” says Schlichting.
The Waipawa sub-station currently has two key Grid Injection Points. One delivers power north and east into Hawke’s Bay, which Helios has an application to connect into. The other delivers power south into the Wairarapa, which SkySolar has an application to connect into.
Transpower operates its National Grid as an “open” access system. “This means we will connect any new generation where the developer demonstrates their project is viable, has the potential to be consented, and they have an understanding of how the project is likely to operate within the wholesale electricity market,” says a Transpower spokesperson.
A solar farm gets paid at a wholesale rate for the amount of electricity it sends to the Grid. (The wholesale market is where generators sell electricity and retailers buy. Retailers then onsell that electricity to businesses and households across New Zealand.)
make our power cheaper?
“Yes,” says Schlichting. “By generating more renewable energy at low cost, it will democratise access to that electricity and bring the cost down. Solar power on the grid is displacing thermal and higher cost hydro at peak periods. The end result of that is the price should come down for everyone.
Schlichting and co-founding partner Tim Derrick say with a decline in the cost of solar components and installation costs, and an increase in long-term reliability and efficiency of solar farms, solar energy is a no-brainer.
Farmer perspective
Ongaonga farmer Duncan Holden agrees.
Holden is one of three Ongaonga farmers who are working with Helios to lease part of their land for a 35 year period.
“We are all farming on lighter soils with Class 4 and 5 soil types,” says Holden. “With no access to irrigation, this land grows stuff-all.”
I meet Holden in Ongaonga and walk with him over stoney soils, which are part of the old Tukituki riverbed. The Tukituki is now set in its flow path, protected by a stop bank. Currently Holden grazes sheep and cattle with some cropping on the better soils.
“Solar has the potential for us to look at intergenerational farming businesses because of the lease term. It promises a greater return than what we are currently getting and we can farm the land with sheep.”
Helios was founded in 2020 by two Hillary Fellows, Jeff Schlichting and Tim Derrick, who’ve both had long careers in renewable energy in the US. They are among some 500 global entrepreneurs and investors chosen by the Edmund Hillary Foundation (EHF) “to incubate global solutions in Aotearoa New Zealand”.
As well as Ongaonga, Helios has consent for a 207 hectare farm in Edgecumbe and is waiting on consent for a 660 hectare farm in the Maniototo. Another 190 hectare farm in Greytown, in the Wairarapa, is in the early planning stages.
“We’re looking at producing about 1,000+ megawatts of solar generating capacity across the country or ten times the size of the project we’re proposing at Ongaonga,” says managing director Jeff Schlichting. “That would translate to powering roughly 250,000
Like most solar farms, the Helios Ongaonga solar farm will also incorporate a large battery energy storage system.
“Battery storage plays a role in providing resilience for the Grid,” says Schlichting. “Obviously solar power generated is higher in the midday summer. We refer to solar energy as ‘virtual rain’ as it’s during those hours that you can slow the hydro-electricity output, keep the water behind the dam, and send that through during the evening or overnight during periods when the sun isn’t shining at all.
“Just because it’s cloudy it doesn’t mean there isn’t any solar production,” he adds. “The panels simply operate at a lower efficiency.”
Solar farms generally seem to have a life expectancy of 35 years and according to Helios, the panels can then be 100% recycled as e-waste in NZ.
The big question though, is will they
Holden says once the solar panels are in place, because of the shading, there is potential for the land to retain soil moisture and grow more grass. There is also the potential for inter-row cropping and he is watching the Lincoln University research with interest.
The proposed solar farm is 600 to 800 metres away from any road or neighbour. “The Tukituki River is our longest neighbour and Helios will be planting around the boundary with native species.
“We’ll manage the pasture and add value to land that we could add very little to otherwise.
“This is also a great opportunity to help eliminate the fire risk.
“The sheep will be happy campers under the panels.”
Helios and SkySolar have engaged with mana whenua, other stakeholders and the Ongaonga community. Helios held an open-day in the town late last year and is setting up a Community
“We’ll manage the pasture and add value to land that we could add very little to otherwise. This is also a great opportunity to help eliminate the fire risk. The sheep will be happy campers under the panels.”
Duncan
Holden
Trust Model made up of representatives from Helios, mana whenua, council and the local community. Once their solar farm is underway, the Trust will receive funds on an annual basis to distribute to the benefit of the local community in key areas like education, sustainability and energy hardship.
Central Hawke’s Bay District’s Mayor Alex Walker says renewable energy generation is an important investment for her region’s future land-use diversification and resilience. “Our GDP and economy have been very reliant on fibre and meat production. We need different land uses and solar farming is definitely one of them.”
She says the district will benefit from employment opportunities early in the construction phase, as well as wider economic benefits gained by the region becoming a net electricity producer.
“For example, Ōtāne has a very good pilot seed-drying facility and wants to expand, but it is very energy intensive. Having this energy production on our door step will definitely help new industry. It will also strengthen local resilience in a disaster on the scale of Cyclone Gabrielle.
“Ideally we would love to see local and regional investments for most economic impact, but currently the interest is dominated by large internationally-backed companies.”
The Mayor has met with the community and says there are still some concerns to iron out “as this is very new technology for our community to understand.
“The local community is rightly worried about things like fire risk from the farms, heat radiation and waste when they are de-commissioned. The providers have answers to all this, but I think we need an independent eye at government level regulating these concerns and any other flow-on ramifications from solar farming. The solar boom is happening right across the country, but we don’t want to boom and bust.”
Hawke’s Bay Airport
Hawke’s Bay Airport, in partnership with Manawa Energy, plans to develop a large-scale solar PV installation “airside” that will eventually power the airport, and contribute to local electricity needs. However, Business Development Manager Judi Goldbold says the project is still in the feasibility studies phase.
“When assessments and studies are complete, the project partners will be able to share more information, including an updated development timeline.”
HB power provider Unison is working with the Airport to help them understand the cost and feasibility of connecting to its distribution network.
Jason Larkin, Unison General Manager Commercial & Regulation and for Centralines, (CHB), says, “As electricity distribution businesses, Unison and Centralines offer connection services for small-to medium scale solar projects ranging from roof top solar to solar farms that are not large enough to connect directly to the National Grid. We are enabling renewable generation as part of decarbonising NZ.”
Power to the People, a proposal first muted in 2018 to develop a multi-million dollar solar farm powering 400 low-income Flaxmere households is rumoured to still be on the cards, but BayBuzz couldn’t confirm this.
In the meantime Flaxmere College students have conceived and fundraised for a solar project to provide for the
“Our GDP and economy have been very reliant on fibre and meat production. We need different land uses and solar farming is definitely one of them.”
Alex Walker, CHB mayor
school’s electricity needs. The first phase is installed and eventually the system will provide power to the surrounding neighbourhood. For more on this see
Community resilience
A lot of smaller scale solar energy projects are firing across Hawke’s Bay. These will play a vital role in our communities’ future resilience.
As I write, MBIE’s (Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment ) Community Renewable Energy Fund, managed in Hawke’s Bay by Senior Policy Advisor Chris Lambourne, is supporting a major deployment of solar panels and massive battery systems, to the tune of as much as $100,000 each, to community hubs across the region so they can effectively function in a disaster.
Duncan Holden is one of three Ongaonga farmers working with Helios on a 35 year lease. Photo: Tess Redgrave
“Where we’ve got appropriate land, and not on our highly productive soils, then solar farming should definitely be part of Hawke’s Bay’s land-use mix in the future.”
When BayBuzz caught up with one provider, Free Energy Solutions, owner Aaron Duncan and his team were installing 40 solar panels on the roof of the Hastings Sports Centre (HSC), and about to start work at Waiohiki Marae.
“The panels on HSC will produce about 20,000 kilowatts per year and support the centre’s day-to-day power use,” explains Duncan. “They will also charge a massive battery system, which the centre can run off if the mains power is cut.”
Free Energy Solutions is involved in the design and installation of solar and battery systems at seven different locations. “All of these systems have been designed specific to the site requirements to provide reliable long term resilience with solar and battery backup.
“In the event of a short or long term power outage, the system will deliver power for essential services such as lighting, cooking and communications.”
Solar leader
Hawke’s Bay is a solar leader with the first private peer-to-peer solar energy network of its kind in New Zealand. Te Rehe Solar Network (TRSN) was created when Hastings-based Financial Advisors’ Stewart Group decided to reduce their reliance on the national power grid by installing a 44kw per hour solar array on their Karamu Road building.
PRINCIPAL PARTNER
Now partnered with Our Energy company and using bespoke software, Te Rehe has about 120 members buying and selling solar power across HB and as a far north as Northland and Waiheke Island.
One happy Te Rehe member is farmer and Hastings District Councillor Marcus Buddo. He has 24, 375 watt panels on his Poukawa farm’s north-facing woolshed and this is contributing significant power to the woolshed, farm homestead, manager’s cottage and shearers quarters. “Our power bill has gone from about $600 per month to $200.”
For Buddo his first concern was that the investment in solar made financial sense, which it does. “After that,” he says, “it’s good to be able to do something positive for the environment.”
Buddo brings the same approach as a HDC Councillor when thinking about solar farming. “Where we’ve got appropriate land, and not on our highly productive soils, then solar farming should definitely be part of Hawke’s Bay’s land-use mix in the future.”
You can bet Thomas Edison would agree.
Sites being funded by the Community Renewable Energy Fund
Cook Islands Community Hall, Flaxmere Elsthorpe Hall
Havelock North Function Centre
Hastings Sports Centre
Waipukurau War Memorial Hall
Taihoa Marae
Rongomaraeroa Marae
Wairoa War Memorial Hall
Tuai Hall
Oamahu Marae
Te Haroto Marae
Waiohiki Marae
CHB Municipal Theatre, Waipawa
Samoan Assembly of God, Napier
Hohepa, Taradale
Ongaonga Playschool and Hall
Rongomaiwahine, Mahia
Napier Central School
BayBuzz energy and climate reporting is sponsored by Unison in support of independent local journalism.
Note: Some sites are yet to go through engineering appraisal and resource consent process which may affect whether they can install a solar PV and battery system as part of MBIE Community Resilience Programme.
Marcus Buddo
Marcus Buddo on his Poukawa farm. Photos: Florence Charvin
Dinner at Mister D Dining
Wednesday to Saturday from 5.30pm
Breakfast and Lunch
You said you wouldn’t be caught dead in that dress again. You’d better tell them now.
Preplan your funeral today and leave nothing to chance...
MAJOR DECISIONS FOR HB
Engagement
exhaustion ahead?
Our councils are preparing some really heavy lifting in the months ahead, and much of that will involve public engagement around major infrastructure challenges – flood protection across the region, a Coastal Hazards Strategy, ‘3 Waters’ investment and service delivery, and a Napier-Hastings Development Strategy.
Decisions made in these four areas will direct the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars over the coming decade and beyond, as well as dramatically shape our physical landscape.
BayBuzz has been reporting regularly online on these decision-making processes in bits and pieces. Here I try to give a better sense of the full scope of critical issues ‘in play’ affecting our region’s future.
The significance of these decisions requires major public engagement ... and indeed raises the threat of ‘engagement exhaustion’.
Flood protection
‘Flood protection’ to many residents refers to protecting homes, businesses and lifeline infrastructure from river and stream flooding, as per recent severe weather events.
But more widely, it intersects with our broader civil defence preparedness and immediate response to any natural disaster. Our region’s latest weather
challenge triggered a handful of reviews that exposed shortcomings that would just as likely have crippled our response to a major earthquake or tsunami. So in that sense, the civil defence and emergency management lessons that now must be actioned have wider applicability to our future security.
On the flooding front, the Regional Council received in July a very comprehensive independent 250-page flood review (from a panel led by Dr Phil Mitchell) of its Cyclone Gabrielle flood management. As Councillors noted, its analysis and 47 recommendations become the accountability standard against which to measure the sufficiency of HBRC’s future remedial actions.
Perhaps the most strategic message delivered by the Report is that stopbanks can offer only a limited degree of protection, and get us by in many situations, but in such severe events they will not suffice. And so the challenge becomes managing the flood overflow as safely as possible – from the upper reaches that will first be breached down through flood plains to the sea. This new approach must be imagined and designed with all community stakeholders, as it involves decisions about pathways, property rights, risk allocation and priorities. The Report noted: “The key strategic arrangement of the catchment system needs to be based around the evolving global best practice of ‘Making Room for
the River’ and ‘Natural/Nature Based Solutions’...”
The Report also argued HBRC should be empowered to instruct councils where not to build!
Then in August HBRC received from consultants Tonkin + Taylor its first pass at the range of options that might be considered to manage flood events on the Heretaunga Plains and the Upper Tukituki (available here).
In both cases, much more is on the table than simply more or higher stopbanks. Similar investigation and option analysis has occurred to address Wairoa’s situation.
With respect to the Heretaunga and Upper Tukituki schemes, Tonkin + Taylor has so far examined the present infrastructure in detail, reviewed the actual breaches and flooding that occurred, identified a range of potential system improvements and modelled the effectiveness of those in various flood scenarios.
Council and consultants alike are emphatic that the advice presented was early stage, requiring more technical review, Council direction and community engagement.
Key takeaways from the presentation … • Changes must be made in a holistic
Illustration: Brett Monteith
framework, meaning that a ‘fix’ at one location (such as raising a stopbank or installing an additional one) will change the flooding behaviour and effectiveness of the system elsewhere. Planning must constantly be looking at the big picture.
• Yes, bridges were a major obstacle exacerbating flooding, and their design must be addressed, but modeling shows that even without bridges the intensity of rainfall would have caused major overtopping. [As many other observers have noted, the issue is woody debris + bridges.]
• The blocking of waters at the converged mouth of the Tūtaekurī and Ngaruroro Rivers requires major rethinking of river mouth management. Likewise the railroad and highway bridges at Awatoto represent huge flow barriers at that location. It was emphasized that in this event both these rivers peaked at the same time, exacerbating not only these choke points but obviously every structural protection in the system.
Beyond such broad strokes, Tonkin + Taylor picked apart each of the rivers section by section, indicating the types of specific interventions that could be considered and their various impacts – raising stopbanks, new and/or secondary stopbanks, spillways, ponding areas, connections to drainage systems, stopbank design and surface treatment … and in the case of the Ngaruroro, perhaps widening of the river course.
What next?
Regional Council staff propose the rest of 2024 be devoted to further analysis and sorting out how to engage both the community at large and its many interest groups. Then 2025 would be devoted to working toward community understanding and stakeholder buy-in for various options. 2026 then devoted to governance and funding issues, decision-making around these, and translating all that into LTPs due in 2027.
Hopefully some low-hanging fruit will be identified so that visible progress can be made while more complex deliberations around optimal interventions, risk tolerance and funding can occur.
Meantime, former mayor Lawrence Yule has been appointed Crown Manager to oversee joint development of flood mitigation plans by HBRC and the Wairoa Council and other local stakeholders. He’s been given 18 months to get things sorted up there. With respect to Civil Defence and
Of course, apart from selecting the most efficacious interventions to protect each ‘cell’ and prioritising their implementation, the bottom line issue becomes, who pays?
Emergency Management, reviews and recommendations have been completed at both the regional (Mike Bush report) and national (Sir Jerry Mateparae report) levels in response to last year’s weather disasters. The excellent Bush review went from big picture to deep in the weeds and produced 75 recommendations. Both reports stressed the need to better tap local knowledge and to engage the community seriously in response planning and execution.
Our Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Joint Committee, consisting of the region’s mayors, HBRC chair and iwi reps, supported by CDEM staff and councils’ chief executives, is overseeing CDEM reform initiatives, a number of which have begun. For example, development of 31 community and marae hubs across the region with work on a further 40 progressing. Operational capability has been enhanced with 312 council and partner staff across the region attending emergency management training.
CDEM has appointed HB-based John Hamilton as Independent Advisor for this work. The appointment is intended to bring a senior experienced outside view to redesign and implement the HB civil defence structure and activities and hopefully restore community confidence in regional and local emergency management.
Mr Hamilton has served as Director of the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (20062014). He was appointed National Coordinator for the response to the
2011 Christchurch earthquake and was responsible for coordination of the national response and for implementation of recommendations made in the post-earthquake review of the response. Prior to his civil defence experience Mr Hamilton served 35 years in the Royal NZ Air Force.
Coastal Hazards Strategy 2120
After some ten years of technical analysis and public engagement with coastal residents, iwi and other stakeholders, a Hawke’s Bay Coastal Hazards Strategy has been delivered, looking ahead at mitigating climate change impacts over the next 100 years.
Under the auspices of the Clifton to Tangoio Coastal Hazards Strategy Joint Committee (yes, another Joint Committee), huge amounts of technical information have been served up for councils and residents to acquire and absorb – predictions of future conditions, pros and cons of a full range of interventions and their costs (including planned retreat), agreeing on the decision-making framework and ‘triggers’ that would guide ultimate choices and the ranking of their priority of implementation.
The proposed scheme is built around nine priority coastal locations from Clifton to Tangoio, each with its intervention plan, timetable and costs. The plan is designed to be adaptive, recognising that the degree and pace of climate change impact is uncertain.
Of course, apart from selecting the most efficacious interventions to protect each ‘cell’ and prioritising their implementation, the bottom line issue becomes, who pays?
The strategy proposes:
• 70% of the cost to implement the works are proposed to be met by all properties within the unit. These costs are then allocated to individual properties based on three categories being high, medium or low risk of inundation.
• 25% of the cost to implement the works are proposed to be met by the relevant council (Napier or Hastings), as the works preserve the value of council amenities that are close to the unit.
• 5% is allocated to the whole region (including Wairoa & CHB), as there are assets that benefit the entire region that will be protected by the Coastal Strategy works.
Indicative medium- and longer-term pathway actions
Unit Short term (0-20 years)
Whirinaki (B)
Bay View (C)
Westshore (D)
Ahuriri (E1)
Pandora (E2)
Status quo / renourishment
Status quo / renourishment
Renourishment
Status quo
Status quo
East Clive (J) Status quo
Haumoana (K1)
Te Awanga (K2)
Renourishment + control structures
Renourishment + control structures
Clifton (L) Status quo
This approach puts the main burden on the property owners most directly affected, with the wider rate paying community contributing on the basis that essential community assets (roads, reserves, wastewater treatment plants) must be protected as well.
Unknown at this time is the extent, if any, to which the Crown might ultimately come to the party with funding. That decision must be taken with a view of the costs of protecting NZ’s entire coastline (or at least its built portions) and the assets sitting on them.
In its first assessment of NZ climate adaptation planning, released in August, Climate Change Commission Chair Dr Rod Carr notes: “Adapting to a changing climate is different for each individual community – it is an inherently local issue. Central government can provide a way forward by giving communities the tools they need to make their own choices. Supporting councils as they plan and take action with their communities to live with the impacts of climate change is a key issue that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.”
A Local Government NZ report put the cost of endangered councils’ assets alone (i.e., not including private or central government) at up to $14 billion. The Hawke’s Bay risk was put at $1.2 billion, third-highest in the country. Implementation of the strategy has been delegated to the Regional Council, and relevant HDC and NCC coastal assets will be transferred to HBRC. Consultation on this strategy will occur early next year, aiming for completion by March. The chart above summarises an amazing amount of background data and community vetting.
term (20-50 years)
Renourishment + control structures
Renourishment + control structures
Renourishment + control structures
Sea wall
Storm surge barrier
Renourishment + control structures
term (50-100 years)
Sea wall
Renourishment + control structures
Renourishment + control structures
Sea wall
Storm surge barrier
Retreat the line / managed retreat
Renourishment + control structures Managed retreat
Renourishment + control structures
Sea wall
So again, yes, you will be paying an additional rate for your water services, most likely to a new HB regional entity.
In the meantime, more urgent ‘immediate actions’ have commenced with beach renourishment at Bay View and Westshore, as well as groyne construction to help capture and hold in place shore gravel in Haumoana and Te Awanga. Triggers have been identified for ‘short term’ responses for Whirinaki, which also faces losses from erosion and potential coastal inundation.
‘3 Waters’
The current government calls this area of infrastructure planning ‘Local Water Done Well’. But ‘3 Waters’ more clearly describes what’s at stake – how to fund and build reliable, safe infrastructure to deliver our drinking water, wastewater and stormwater services. The government has announced a model where local councils will create a separate Council-Controlled Organisation (CCO) empowered to borrow to fund water infrastructure so that this borrowing (and rating) is undertaken separately from the councils.
Renourishment + control structures
Managed retreat
This will give our local councils more headroom to themselves borrow more to fund other council priorities and projects. The new CCOs will borrow from the existing NZ Local Government Funding Agency, an entity that councils now use for borrowing at slightly below private market rates.
Says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown: “LGFA has confirmed it can immediately begin lending to water CCOs that are financially supported by their parent council or councils. (Editor: emphasis added.) LGFA will support leverage for water CCOs up to a level equivalent to 500 percent of operating revenues – around twice that of existing councils – subject to water CCOs meeting prudent credit criteria. This will enable councils to better manage debt and make essential infrastructure investments without drastic rate hikes.”
Basically that means the new entities can borrow up to five times their revenue, that revenue to come from water users — irrigators, businesses, you and me. Obviously, funding water infrastructure – with up to 80-year asset life – via borrowing is the prudent way to distribute the costs of these assets across generations of ratepayers. So yes, current ratepayers will pay less now than if all these costs were immediately loaded onto today’s rates. But this is the way all councils’ capital investments are normally funded. Nothing new here. What is new is facilitating the creation of these new entities – the water CCOs – to do the borrowing … and levying the rates to pay for the borrowing and service costs. So again, yes, you will be paying an additional rate for your
water services, most likely to a new HB regional entity.
Government regulations will ensure that water revenues are ring-fenced. That said, with our councils given more headroom to borrow for their (non-water) projects, we’ll need to watch carefully how that ability is used. Maybe less peace of mind on that score.
HB’s four mayors have delegated to the HB Regional Recovery Agency the task of shaping HB’s version of a water CCO that would potentially integrate the provision and funding of water services across the region.
While a regional approach seems a no-brainer, it’s not a foregone conclusion.
Hastings Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst says whilst it’s heartening to know we are on the right path undertaking this joint work, it is important to reinforce that no commitment has been made to adopt a regional solution. “We will need to carefully consider all viable options as we progress this important mahi.”
Mayor Craig Little adds: “We absolutely want our communities to have a say on whether a regional water services model will best serve their needs.”
More community consultation!
Napier-Hastings Future Development Strategy (FDS)
This strategy, prepared as required under the National Policy Statement-Urban Development by the Napier, Hastings and Regional Councils, prescribes where housing will be built and industrial land provided on the Heretaunga Plains over the next 30 years.
New greenfield sites would include:
Site name / location
Riverbend Road / Willowbank Avenue, Napier
Riverbend Road, Napier
South Pirimai, Ulyatt Road, Napier
Mission Estate, Church Road, Napier
Lyndhurst Extension Hastings
Kaipo Road, Hastings
Murdoch Road, Hastings
Copeland Road, Hastings
Portsmouth Road, Flaxmere
Arataki Road Extension, Havelock North
Middle Road, Havelock North
Middle Road Extension, Havelock North
Brookvale Road, Havelock North
Oderings Site, Havelock North
As a general principle for the entire urban region, the strategy strongly emphasizes intensification over greenfield development.
The FDS Joint Committee’s preparation of the draft strategy has been guided by extensive consultation with interested landowners and developers, mana whenua, relevant government agencies (e.g., Transport, Education) and infrastructure providers like power and communications.
This has yielded a ‘preferred spatial scenario’, which takes into account broader factors like natural hazards, environmental concerns, transportation impacts and the need to preserve vital primary production land.
During the 30-year planning window the Napier /Hasting population is projected to grow by over 40,000 people from 2023 levels.
As a general principle for the entire
Approximate capacity
290 dwellings
660 dwellings
370 dwellings
100 dwellings
280 dwellings
430 dwellings
120 dwellings
130 dwellings
330 dwellings
110 dwellings
220 dwellings
420 dwellings
125 dwellings
35 dwellings
3,620 dwellings
urban region, the strategy strongly emphasizes intensification over greenfield development. A ‘total demand’ for 16,320 dwellings is projected, 6,700 in Napier and 9,620 in Hastings. New greenfield development is limited to 3,520, 62% of those in the Hastings district. A number of large areas have already been zoned or consented for urban development, or where development has already commenced. These are considered to provide adequate capacity for short-to-medium term new greenfield housing, including: Mission Hills (800 dwellings), Te Awa (615), Parklands (320), Wharerangi Road (350), Wairatahi (460), Brookvale Road (550), Howard Street (350), Iona (350), Lyndhurst Stage 2 (140), Other (275).
The preferred scenario provides only limited opportunities for new greenfield expansion in Napier, given land in its urban area is “generally low-lying, vulnerable to land subsidence and rising groundwater levels, and a range of other natural hazards.”
As for industrial land, Napier has about 60 hectares of undeveloped land (majority around the airport) and Hastings has about 200 (Omahu Road, Irongate, Whakatu and Tomoana). The strategy deems this as sufficient for projected demand over the long-term.
All of the draft strategy and supporting information is available online in excruciating detail and well-illustrated by maps.
Assuming participating councils approve the draft, it will be the public’s turn to comment. More
consultation: Is this the urban growth you want to see, and where you want to see it?
The public engagement window is slated for four weeks over Sep/Oct, followed by hearings. Optimistically, the staff paper projects final approval by councils in December 2024.
As you’ve now read, a heap of public engagement is on the Hawke’s Bay agenda over the next 6-7 months. From traditional submissions processes and stakeholder vetting to yet-to-be-invented participatory mechanisms ... possibly even ‘citizen assemblies’.
All of this will place major time and resource demands on both councils and the interested citizenry ... potentially consultation overload, the topic I’ve discussed in this edition’s From the Editor
It’s time for a
Caci have been on a mission to help New Zealander’s feel great in the skin they’re in for over 30 years specialising in advanced skin treatments, laser and injectables. We’re lucky to have three local clinics in the Hawkes Bay in Hastings, Havelock North and Napier. We sat down with some of team to get their favourite skin treatments for a refreshing spring clean!
“My fave for a spring refresh would be a package of LED Light Therapy treatments. I did this last year to get myself wedding ready and this is something all skin types will benefit from. When you have a free consultation with me I make sure to create a safe space as I know skin concerns and excess hair for example can be an emotional topic for a lot of people. Let’s have a chat and we can make a plan just for you. I love helping our customers to have the confidence in their skin that makes them glow on the inside and outside.“
Zara - Caci Hastings
“My favourite treatment would definitely have to be a peel and I’m obsessed with the new Caci Signature Peel as it not only gives my skin an amazing glow but it’s also kick-starting a collagen boost for stronger healthier skin. During a consultation you can be totally open about any concerns or skin goals you have. I love nothing more that sharing how we can then help you! The most rewarding part of working at Caci is definitely the people - I love catching up with customers who are feeling more confident and enjoying their treatments. I’m super passionate about beauty and I get excited even talking with my team about skincare and treatments.“
Samantha – Caci Havelock North
“My favourite treatment for a spring refresh is Microneedling. This treatment is amazing for stimulating collagen and elastin, this is an all round skin game changer! When you have a free consultation with me I like to share my knowledge and passion for everything skincare and Caci and make sure that I have answered all the questions you will have when choosing where to trust with your treatments and also giving personalised advice and the answers you didn’t know you needed too!“
Julie - Caci Napier
Sport + Fitness Damon Harvey
POLO WITH A SPECIAL PURPOSE
Polo is known as the Sport of Kings and played by the rich and famous, but that hasn’t stopped Richard Kettle introducing the game to more than 300 teenagers, including many that have gone off the rails, or are at risk of doing so.
Story by Damon Harvey
Photos by Florence Charvin
It was an idea that came from Leg Up Trust founder Ros Rowe and a local youth aid police officer who was looking for a different approach to tackling teenage troublemaking. Ros used horses to support young people with behavioral issues, had been victims of abuse or had learning difficulties.
They approached Richard Kettle, who had established the Birchleigh Polo Club on his property in Pakipaki, creating a half-sized polo field in a similar vein to the movie Field of Dreams. Richard himself was first introduced to polo in his late teens, giving it away, before picking up the reins again in his 30s and then deciding to pass on his love of the game – one regarded as elitist, mostly due to the costs of horses, equipment and travelling around the country throughout the summer season.
After a bit of trial and error, especially working with troublesome teens, Richard now runs a successful polo training programme for teenagers at Flaxmere College and Hastings Girls’ High School.
As Richard explains, horses can be quite difficult to break in or coerce into doing what you want them to do. They need to know who is boss but in a way that nurtures them and unleashes their potential.
The same can be said for teenagers.
Over the years Richard has seen
many teenagers arrive at his Pakipaki property with an attitude, a tough exterior that in many cases is a legacy of a challenging upbringing.
“It soon became very evident that they really enjoyed it, just having something different in their lives from what was going on at home.
“The horses presented them with new challenges and you could just see them grow in self-confidence and self-belief and that reflected positively on their behaviour and how they communicated at home, school and in the community.
“It also kept them at school, as we had a policy that if you wagged school then you couldn’t participate in the programme.”
Richard proudly says the programme has a 100 percent strike rate of changing the lives of those that participate, which inspires him to go the extra mile in getting them to his property.
“I used to have to drive around and pick them up from home and at one stage I went and got a whole lot of second hand bikes and made them bike out.”
Today up to 25-30 students – 14-16 year olds – from both schools participate in the NZEA accredited programme each polo season (October to March).
Students start with building familiarity and a connection with the horses before saddling up and riding for the first time.
“Most of them haven’t been near a horse before and this is their biggest challenge. It’s when fear appears in
Horses can be quite difficult to break in or coerce into doing what you want them to do. They need to know who is boss but in a way that nurtures them and unleashes their potential. The same can be said for teenagers.
their eyes, when they have to get on (a horse) and get going.”
Richard says many quickly gain enough confidence to canter around the polo field and hit a ball.
However he says some of the boys are a bit too bullish about their so-called horsemanship skills up until they’re given the reins.
“They will say they’ve ridden before, so you take them over to a horse and all of a sudden they freeze and say they’re not getting on.
“There’s also some really talented kids that by the end of summer you can see their potential to go a long way in the sport.
“It also gives them a little more direction and help with behavioural issues as they seem to go back to school a more confident person and they are communicating better with adults and in school.”
Richard gets enthused when he talks
about the positive outcomes and experiences polo has had on his graduates. Hugh Moss, who overcame a tough upbringing, and Pam Haycock, who was contemplating leaving school are two great examples.
Hugh is now a local builder and remains a member of the Birchleigh Polo Club, while Pam gained two NCEA certificates and has volunteered and passed on her enthusiasm to new participants.
Pam says: “When I first joined my life was in a rough patch. I was heavily debating leaving school because I wasn’t enjoying it. It gave me an outlet to enable me to escape the real world.
“You can talk to the horses and there’s zero judgement.
“I completed 2 certificate levels and eventually decided I enjoyed it so much that I started working here.”
It’s not lost on Richard that some people are more fortunate than others, especially when it comes to horse sports, with de rigueur luxury horse trucks or flash horse floats being towed by the latest Range Rover.
“They may see it being a sport for the privileged, but my attitude is ‘stuff that’, everyone has a right to give it a go.”
The programme costs about $40,000 a season to run. It’s a big commitment, with a half-sized polo field to look after along with up to 18 horses to groom, feed and cover any dreaded vet bills.
Fortunately the positive outcomes has seen the likes of Hastings District Council, Sport Hawke’s Bay, Eastern & Central Community Trust provide funding support. The programme is also propped up by club members, some of which also volunteer their time.
“It may sound a bit dramatic but you’re giving these kids a greater chance of success in life. I’ve broken down a ‘them and us’ barrier and it’s neat when they spot you in town and they rush over and say hi. ”
Richard Kettle
“It costs $2000 a horse but you can have some bad luck with vet bills and it was costing me a bit each year and it got to the stage my partner, an accountant, said we had to look at other ways of funding it.”
Sport Hawke’s Bay chief executive Ryan Hambleton says it’s really important that girls are gaining confidence and learning new skills. This helps them be more active in the future in sport and recreational activity and being more willing to give new things a go.
“It’s great to see past participants back helping run the programme and inspiring youth. It shows how much difference the programme has had on students as they are now willing to come back and dedicate their time to help new participants and perhaps inspire them to do the same.”
Flaxmere College teacher in charge of sport Toby Blakey says the programme provides a unique experience and immeasurable benefit, especially for Pasifika and Māori students.
“It has led to increased student engagement, better attendance, boosted self-confidence, improved social skills including empathy and communication. Additionally, participants have exhibited greater resilience and willingness to try new things.
“It may sound a bit dramatic but you’re giving these kids a greater chance of success in life. I’ve broken
down a ‘them and us’ barrier and it’s neat when they spot you in town and they rush over and say hi.
“There’s some that you have helped break a cycle of what’s not going right in their lives and they’re grateful.”
At the end of the season students and former students make up two teams to compete for the Codie Irwin Memorial Trophy, named after a former student who was tragically killed in a road accident.
Richard says a highlight has been a game against local police, which was
duly won by the teens, some of whom had previously been on the wrong side of the law.
Richard is also proud that his little Birchleigh Polo Club continues to punch well above its weight, at one stage having over 30 members, making it one of the largest in New Zealand. It has also attracted overseas players to spend a summer in Hawke’s Bay, both playing and getting involved in the delivery of the programme.
The club has also won the Savile Cup, the oldest sporting trophy in
“When I first joined my life was in a rough patch. I was heavily debating leaving school because I wasn’t enjoying it. It gave me an outlet to enable me to escape the real world. You can talk to the horses and there’s zero judgement.”
Pam Haycock, Birchleigh participant
New Zealand.
Richard says he has plenty of Chukkas (a period of play) left in him and looks forward to saddling up and swinging a mallet with some of his energetic and determined young protégés.
Kaweka Hospital is pleased to sponsor BayBuzz coverage of sport and fitness in Hawke’s Bay.
Leading
surgical care in Hawke’s Bay
Kaweka Hospital has changed over 3000 lives in Hawke’s Bay by delivering surgery in ENT (ear, nose and throat), general surgery, gynaecology, urology and ophthalmology.
Kaweka Hospital, established by Hawke’s Bay clinicians for the people of Hawke’s Bay.
Te taumata tautiaki pokanga hou The new standard in surgical care
– 24
UNISON GROUP BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS
The 2023-24 year marked a strategic turning point for Unison and its group of companies amidst the challenges of inflation, higher interest rates, regulatory change, and post cyclone recovery.
Philip Hocquard Unison Chair
We made encouraging progress recovering and rebuilding our Hawke’s Bay network post cyclone, focusing on making it more resilient and secure. Unison, like many, is feeling the impacts of inflation and higher interest rates.
In the face of these challenges, we embarked on an extensive review and reset of the Group’s vision and strategic direction. At the heart of our vision for the next decade lies a commitment to delivering value to our customers, communities, and shareholder. Fully utilising digital technologies and data will help us to better understand our customers’ needs, support affordable electricity, and secure a sustainable energy future for all.
Jaun Park Group Chief Executive
On 19 June 2024, we celebrated 100 years since the establishment of the Hawke’s Bay Electric Power Board — a century of powering communities, customer service, and innovation. While the industry faces many challenges in the years ahead, we are excited to continue our legacy of community and customer focus.
THE UNISON GROUP
The Unison Group specialises in a range of sustainable energy solutions, employing more than 1,100 people with net assets of over $520 million. Unison is owned by the Hawke’s Bay Power Consumers’ Trust (HBPCT) on behalf of all consumers connected to Unison’s Hawke’s Bay electricity network – an ownership model that ensures a resilient electricity supply, creates employment and business opportunities, ensures Hawke’s Bay power consumers benefit from the growth of the Group’s businesses via the annual dividend to the HBPCT, and provides Unison with a stable shareholder, allowing us to focus on operational excellence.
With the guidance of the Board and support from our shareholder, the Unison Group is well-positioned to face the challenges of the future, take advantage of the opportunities presented by decarbonisation, and continue playing a key role in providing our communities with an electricity network that is resilient, safe, and sustainable.
Unison Networks
Unison Networks maintains and operates the electricity distribution network in Hawke’s Bay, Taupō, and Rotorua; and manages the Centralines network in Central Hawke’s Bay. With over 9,000km of network, Unison Networks provides a safe, reliable, and resilient power supply to nearly 120,000 electricity customer connection points. Unison Networks is the parent company holding the Group’s investments in its subsidiary businesses.
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NETWORKS FOR OUR FUTURE
Unison Networks’ 2024 Regulatory Asset Management Plan outlines our comprehensive strategy to develop, operate, and safeguard our assets and network for the next decade to meet the evolving needs of customers and communities – ensuring secure, accessible, and sustainable energy while enhancing our network’s resilience against severe weather patterns.
As customers adopt sustainable technologies like solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles (EVs), we are transitioning to a more adaptable electricity system that will support increased demand and bidirectional flow, utilising emerging technologies to enhance network management and support evolving energy needs.
This year Unison adopted and enhanced multiple digital tools and processes to gather data, analytics and insights about our network to improve network performance, capability and resilience; and enhance experiences and outcomes for our customers. This included introducing a new online customer application process for distributed energy installations like solar, upgrading our systems, and launching a new tool to map out solar and EV uptake across our regions.
Rebuilding for Greater Resilience
Unison is committed to designing and constructing a network that is stronger, more resilient, and aligns with evolving energy requirements and ambitions.
SUPPORTING CUSTOMER DECARBONISATION
Unison Networks has initiated a project to support industrial customers’ clean energy transition needs. Partnering with DETA Consulting, we’re engaging with customers to understand their business and sustainability objectives, offering insights for Unison’s network planning and decarbonisation strategies.
COMMUNITIES & SPONSORSHIP
This year Unison proudly supported over 20 initiatives, events, and organisations that enhance the wellbeing, growth, and development of its regions. We celebrated 15 years of supporting junior sportsmanship through the Greatest Supporter Programme, which has evolved to include over 12,000 children. We extended our support of free energy coaching service EnergyMate to bring the service to Taupō and Hawke’s Bay. We also supported numerous business awards, award categories, and education programmes; reflecting our commitment to encouraging and rewarding development and success in our regions.
CELEBRATING SUCCESS
This
The design and rebuilding of network substations draws inspiration from our award-winning Windsor Substation which set a new benchmark in balancing affordability, sustainability, and resilience.
Unison’s collaboration with Transpower aims to fortify Hawke’s Bay electricity infrastructure against extreme weather and climate change, with a focus on the Redclyffe Substation rebuild.
Unison shared lessons from Cyclone Gabrielle with local, industry, and national entities to inform government actions, industry standards, and emergency management reforms to improve resilience and disaster readiness.
Unison donated old power poles for tamariki to carve into traditional Māori pou, reflecting our commitment to sustainability and youth development.
Unison Group Strategy Manager Andy Knipe mentors students as part of Unison’s partnership with the Graeme Dingle Foundation to deliver transformational career preparation programmes.
Unison Relationship Manager Isabelle Crawshaw visits customer Permapine as part of Unison Networks’ project to support industrial customers’ clean energy goals.
In 2023 Unison’s Windsor Substation was the first landscape and infrastructure project globally to be awarded the Living Building Challenge Vs 4.0 Petal Certification.
Unison Asset Strategy & Constraints Team Leader Mitch Graham was named 2023 Electricity Engineers’ Association (EEA) Young Engineer of the Year.
year Unison was celebrated at a number of industry gatherings for our action and commitment
KIA ORA HAWKE’S BAY!
We are thrilled to share the success of our recent public port bus tours, which saw a fantastic response from our community. Due to the incredible demand, we expanded our original schedule to accommodate more attendees. Over 450 people, of all ages, had the unique opportunity to go behind the gates and experience Napier Port up close.
This keen interest and participation highlights the strong connection we share with the Hawke’s Bay community. We’re grateful for your support and enthusiasm, which motivates us to continue playing a pivotal role in the region’s development and growth.
As we look forward to future opportunities to engage with you, we want to express our heartfelt thanks for making these inaugural tours such a resounding success. Together, we continue to build a thriving Hawke’s Bay.
Nga mihi,
Todd Dawson Napier Port Chief Executive
Bay Biz
Hawke’s Bay exporter, Frost Fans.
Photo: Florence Charvin
HAWKE’S
BAY EXPORTS THAT?
BayBiz Brenda Newth
When you think about Hawke’s Bay exports, apples, logs, wine and meat spring to mind. But there’s a whole lot more to our exports than just primary production.
In this article we meet four lesser known Hawke’s Bay and East Coast exporters, all finalists in the recent Export NZ ASB Hawke’s Bay Export Awards.
BREBNER PRINT: STAMP OF APPROVAL
With email and electronic payments delivering a king hit to letter volumes worldwide, only a gambler would place a bet on producing postage stamps as a sustainable and long term business strategy.
But that’s exactly what Taradale’s Brebner Print has done. The Hawke’s Bay founded business, now part of Blue Star Group, has become one of only three globally recognised high quality stamp producers, and now exports postage stamps to many countries around the world.
The primary historical role of stamps is to facilitate communication. But they have also served other purposes, as collectibles and as a canvas and mirror for national identity and culture. More than 180 years on from the Penny Black – the world’s first adhesive postage stamp the role of stamps is changing, and Brebner Print is at the forefront of that change.
Blue Star’s 2022 acquisition of Southern Colour Print (SCP), a Dunedinbased stamp producer, paved the way for Brebner becoming one of the world’s best stamp producers. Blue Star moved SCP’s stamp production north to Napier, and brought Matt Tobin, Southern Colour Print’s Stamp Production Manager to oversee production.
These days stamps account for around 18% of Brebner revenue, and around one-third of the Brebner workforce.
Matt Tobin explains: “We’ve got 15 people (out of a total workforce of 49) working in stamp production, and it’s mostly for export.
“We’re exporting stamps to 37 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, and have seen 50% year-on-year growth in this part of the business. We are projecting the same level of growth for next year, and have just added Taiwan, Macao and Brunei to our customer base.”
With postal volumes falling across the world, postal administrations are trying to encourage new collectors, he says.
“And the way they do that is by making things really pretty. We’re really producing little bits of art for people to buy.”
“We’re exporting stamps to 37 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, and have seen 50% year-on-year growth in this part of the business.”
Matt Tobin
Tobin has spent 20 years in the print trade, qualifying as an offset printer. The complexity of stamp production sets it apart from other print jobs.
“Stamps are a lot more difficult to produce than a brochure, which is usually a template. It’s the variety, the shape of the sheets, the embellishments and the stamp sizes. They all present their own difficulties. There’s just a lot of challenge.
“I love that countries tell their stories through stamps.”
Brebner stamp products include gummed stamps, self-adhesive booklets, rolls, and first day cover envelopes. With an eye for the collectors, embellishments include holograms, specialty papers, fluorescent ink, foiling, sculpted embossing and exceedingly high resolution of more than 600 dots per inch.
Customers are not shy about investing to create the ultimate in collectible stamps, says Tobin.
“One spent about $50,000 for a special kind of perforation that will be used once. Another spent around $30,000 to develop a hologram, which was a New Zealand first. And we’re seeing more innovation in shapes and designs,” he says.
Brebner Print.
Photo: Florence Charvin
“Today Frost Fans employs 80, and is at the forefront of agritech innovation, exporting to 12 countries. If you look at all the crops we could potentially protect, the opportunity is large.”
Andrew Priest
As you might expect, there’s a lot of security involved in stamp production and Brebner is one of a small group of companies with the necessary security status to produce postage stamps, and is regularly audited by Swiss audit company SQS.
When asked what sets Brebner apart as a stamp producer, Tobin says it comes down to quality.
“There are three printers in the world that are shortlisted for being of a high enough quality standard. One in France, one in the Netherlands and us. We are the only three that are even eligible to tender on work.
“The special thing is, this is among the most technically difficult and highest quality expectation work, and we’ve introduced it to Brebner Print,” says Tobin.
FROST FANS: THE BOSS OF FROST
From its brand new $12 million factory on Omahu Road Hastings, Frost Fans delivers peace of mind to growers of frost susceptible crops all over the world.
Founded nearly 30 years ago, on a model of importing and selling offshore fan technology, Frost Fans began designing and building its own models from 2007, says CEO Andrew Priest.
“One of the big parts of our IP is our composite blade, designed by former Team New Zealand designer Richard Karn, to make sure we had the most efficient blade rotating through the air.”
This fan technology, marketed as Frost Boss, together with on-theground service teams in key growing areas in New Zealand and Australia, a climate consultancy, and app-enabled data analysis has positioned Frost Fans as the market leader in Australasia.
Today Frost Fans employs 80 globally, and is at the forefront of agritech innovation, exporting to 12 countries,
with many thousands of fans protecting crops around the world. About half of its fans protect apple crops, says Priest.
“But that’s changing quite rapidly as we expand geographies and crop types. We cover wine and table grapes, nuts, citrus, stone fruit, pip fruit, berries, kiwis and avocados.
“Essentially any crop that can be damaged by frost. In Hawke’s Bay there’s lots of apples that we protect. In Marlborough, it’s all wine. In Australia there’s a really big segment of almonds that we protect, and that’s quite a growing area for us.”
Exports to countries other than Australia currently account for a third of sales, says Priest.
“If I springboard forward five years, our hope is that non-Australian exports will be two thirds of our revenue, and that we’re growing sufficiently in those large markets in Europe (France, Italy, Portugal) and in Latin America.
“If you look at all the crops we could potentially protect, the opportunity is large. But of course, accessing it, and
making it happen, when you actually have to go and do it, is more difficult.
“There’s almost two stages we have to go through in new markets. The first is to convince a grower they need frost protection, and then we need to convince them to use a Frost Boss.”
Priest didn’t want to comment on price, but did say that the fans more than pay for themselves after one frost event.
“If you take the earnings per hectare of whatever crop times the seven hectares (on average) that one of our fans cover, the fan will pay for itself.”
Frost Fans new manufacturing capabilities rely heavily on robotics, the first of its kind in Oceania, and have tripled production capacity, enabling the company to more easily scale, says Priest.
“It’s also given us a much more accurate product, an increase in quality and a much better working environment for our team.”
Frost Fans was named Judges’ Choice at the recent Export NZ ASB Hawke’s Bay Export Awards.
ABOVE: Andrew Priest, Frost Fans. Photo supplied. Other photos: Florence Charvin
MAGIQ SOFTWARE: THE MAGIC TOUCH
In 1980, the Benson brothers, John, Jim, and Pat started a little software company in Napier serving the New Zealand utility and local government sectors, that they optimistically called Magiq. Customer number one was Wairoa District Council.
Fast forward 44 years and Magiq
Software is a cloud based enterprise resource planning software company, a fancy name that means its software runs ‘whole of business’ – everything from rates billing, dog registration, parking tickets and all the back end functions like budgeting and document management – with four locations globally, and more than 600 local government clients in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.
Despite its global footprint, Magiq’s headquarters remain in Hawke’s Bay, explains Hamish Murray, Group Sales Manager Australia and New Zealand.
“All of the development work for
our enterprise product that councils use is done out of Hawke’s Bay, and we support our worldwide locations from here as well. We have about 45 staff located in Napier; some of our senior management team, and all of our development and support teams.”
In 2012, Magiq underwent a transformation, with a significant rewrite of the product to modernise the software.
“It’s now completely cloud based, and built in Amazon Web Services. We’ve taken many of our legacy customers, like Wairoa District Council through a process of upgrading the old software applications to the modern cloud version,” says Murray.
That transformation paved the way for Magiq to enter the Australian market where it began building an enterprise solution for local governments on a piecemeal basis.
“We did it long and slow. Around the same time, we also acquired two complementary businesses that were Melbourne-based, and products from those businesses – budgeting for
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“Magiq’s headquarters remain in Hawke’s Bay … and we support our worldwide locations from here ... we have about 45 located in Napier; some of our senior management team, and all of our development and support teams.”
Hamish Murray
government and document management for government – are now tucked into our enterprise solution and sold separately.”
Magiq took its budgeting solution to the United States, partnering with half a dozen local government vendors, and today has around 250 North American local government organisations using its software.
In 2021, Magiq was acquired by US based Springbook Software, a significant local government ERP provider.
They do everything that we do in Australia and New Zealand,” says Murray. “And they also resell our products.”
When asked what sets Magiq apart, Murray says it’s the history of the company.
“Our organisational roots and our products, were born in local government. It’s a marketplace where you can make significant inroads to grow your business if you’re an established vendor like us.
“There are far less competitors in local government than in the private sector, and that’s because of the complexities of local government. There’s typically 40-plus business units in a local government agency, and no one vendor will deliver it all. So being able to work with other systems is highly important, and we provide that for customers.
“We can solve complex problems, we have high ‘reference-ability’. There
are no trade secrets in local government. They swap stories and you’re only as good as your references.”
As to the future, Murray says that Magiq wants to continue to grow in each of its markets.
“There’s enough activity for us to do that, and we are derisked by being in three jurisdictions. We see continued investment in Hawke’s Bay, and depending on the role and availability of skills, we intend on hiring continuing. It’s not going to go the other way.
“It does look like it’s going to be a positive few years ahead for us.”
RUA BIOSCIENCE: NEW ZEALAND GREEN
Medicinal cannabis company Rua Bioscience carries the hopes and dreams of East Coast communities.
The Māori founded NZX-listed business, raised its first $2 million by crowdfunding from local communities, from Te Araroa to Tairāwhiti, visiting marae along the way, says CEO Paul Naske.
“The community came along on the journey of starting up this business. Internally, we call it the community’s business, because they’re invested in it literally and emotionally.
“We had people coming in, grandmothers, with $50 notes saying it’s from my mokopuna. I’m buying a share.”
Rua Bioscience has its origins in Ruatoria, a place with strong associations to the Class C drug, marijuana. Co-founders Manu Caddie and Panapa Ehau wanted to do good, and transform a small impoverished rural community. It coincided with the medical cannabis regime opening up in New Zealand.
In 2024 the company is very different from when it started, around five years ago. Originally the plan was to grow everything, and export it, explains Naske.
“But as the regulations progressed, we’ve changed the business model. Ruatoria’s focus is about the genetics they have access to. What we’re doing is developing cannabis genetics – tiny seeds or cannabis plants, and exporting those to cultivation partners who do commercial growing.
“They take our inputs, and grow it into a product, and then we sell the product in that market, branded as Rua.”
Rua’s medicinal cannabis products have been available in Australia for around a year, and launched in
“We had people coming in, grandmothers, with $50 notes saying it’s from my mokopuna. I’m buying a share.”
Paul Naske
Germany last year. It has two products approved in New Zealand and will be in the United Kingdom in October.
“By October we will be in four markets, with four revenue streams. It’s taken us five years to get to a solid start line, and we can grow from there. Medicinal cannabis is in a tighter and tougher framework than food, so you have higher hurdles to jump through in a regulation sense. We are making good, solid progress,” he says.
Sustainability and giving back is a key part of Rua’s kaupapa, with a compassionate access programme for people who can’t afford the medicine, and a scholarship programme for locals.
“We work with suppliers internationally, and we say to them: ‘If you want to work with us, this is our community. Can you donate to our compassionate access or scholarship programmes?’”
While Naske rates regulation as a key risk for the business, he notes that markets are liberalising.
“There’s been regulation changes in Germany, which means demand is very high, so we’re playing into that.
“In every one of our markets the graphs are all going up and the pie is expanding, so we are playing into a growing market. The optimistic future is bright.”
The diversity of our export community brings real strength to our economy, and helps Hawke’s Bay to weather the swings and roundabouts of global markets, and what’s happening at home. We export that? Yes, we do!
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ROCKET LAB’S STELLAR TRAJECTORY
Keith Newman tracks the progress of the company that launched Hawke’s Bay into the global space economy and the passion that propels its visionary rocket man, Sir Peter Beck.
BayBiz Innovators Keith Newman
Kiwi-led space industry pioneer Rocket Lab is a high flier in every conceivable way, notching up successive wins in satellite deployment enhancing the future of communications, environmental science and defence.
Rocket Lab’s meteoric rise following a test launch from Mahia Peninsula 18 years ago has put New Zealand on the global star map sending impressive payloads into orbit for governments, environmental advocates and multinational giants.
It was named company of the year at the May 2024 Hi-Tech Awards and within weeks had launched twin rockets on a NASA mission to map polar heat loss, celebrated 180 satellites in orbit and the deployment of its 50th Electron rocket.
In July Rocket Lab launched the fifth of 16 Electron launches for Japanese radar imaging and earth observation company Synspective to detect millimetre-level changes to earth’s surface. Another is planned before the end of the year. Rocket Lab also built and tested twin satellites for an 11-month NASA mission to Mars to measure plasma and magnetic fields in the Martian upper atmosphere which launched from Cape Canaveral in August.
Meanwhile it has signed its biggest contract ever with Synspective for ten more payloads of its StriX synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites for near real-time disaster management and other applications to go into orbit between 2025 to 2027.
Founder and CEO Peter Beck was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (KNZM) in the King’s Birthday Honours list for services to the space industry.
In 2018-2019 Deloitte estimated the space industry had returned $1.75 billion to the New Zealand economy and was on a sharp upward trajectory.
Rocket Lab spacecraft contracts to mid-2025 alone are valued at over $500m. Meanwhile it is investing around $US250 million to compete with the likes of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin with its Neutron rocket due for testing “no earlier than mid-2025”.
The global space economy, according to various sources, will allegedly treble in value from $US630 billion in 2023 trending toward an astronomical $US1.8 trillion by 2035.
Low-cost launches
Sir Peter’s vision is to make the process of launching smaller and heavier payload satellites more affordable and to make it easier “to do incredible things to benefit billions of people on Earth” as he pushes deeper into space from space. He says there are incredible opportunities for New Zealand.
Rocket Lab added a second Mahia launchpad in 2022 and began an expansion into Australia in 2023. Electron, the second commercial rocket to reach orbit by 2018, is today the second most frequently launched rocket in the world.
Beck says New Zealand’s launch capability is the envy of many other countries. “It’s no exaggeration to say that countries like Australia and Scotland are spending millions and millions trying to catch up with what we already have.”
We’re the fourth most prolific launch provider in the world, “after the US, China, Russia it’s Mahia.”
Compelled to propel Beck entered the workplace as a tool and dye engineer at Fisher & Paykel in Auckland in the 90s. In pursuit of his propulsion passion he invented a rocket bike and jet pack before purchasing a cruise missile engine from the US to experiment with.
He was supported by future investor Stephen Tindall to visit international space industry operations and after founding Rocket Lab in 2006, he’s now a venture capitalist encouraging innovation.
If our engineers and entrepreneurs can be successful in the global space industry, “we can be successful at anything”.
Through global investment and acquisition Nasdaq-listed Rocket Lab USA, Inc., is today a multi-billion dollar ($US2.2 billion) design and build company offering every conceivable service to the space industry and its clients.
It’s funded by 15 investors including Trinity Capital and the US Space Force with headquarters in Long Beach California and launch facilities at the southern tip of Mahia Peninsula (Complex 1) and Wallops Island Virginia (Complex 2).
It has manufacturing and mission operations in Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Maryland, Toronto and a
satellite manufacturing and assembly factory in Auckland.
The company, not expected to make a profit until sometime in 2025, has close to 2,000 employees, half based in New Zealand. Beck who retains a 10% shareholding entered the New Zealand Rich List at an estimated $600 milllion in June 2024.
Expanding orbits
Rocket Lab’s cosmic aspirations began with the sub-orbital test launch of Atea-1 in 2009 making it the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to do so, essentially forcing the creation of the New Zealand Space Agency in 2016.
The Ministry of Business Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE) agency has legal responsibility for space policy and regulation including permits and licences for rocket payloads, launches and launch facilities.
The first Electron launch in 2018 deployed two satellites and since then Rocket Lab has completed numerous small communications, surveillance and climate and weather-focused satellite missions, the majority on behalf of NASA. “We have an excellent track record of delivering NASA’s payloads to exactly where they need to go when they need to go,” says Beck.
Rocket Lab delivered the Capstone mission to the moon in June 2022, collecting data to inform future explorations, including the proposed moon orbiting space station.
There were dual Electron missions in May 2023 releasing four satellites for the Tropics mission, monitoring how tropical cyclones and hurricanes are formed to improve predictive models. That month New Zealand introduced its National Space Policy, positioning the country as an attractive place for launches, manufacturing space-related technology, conducting space science and research … and protecting and advancing national security and economic concerns.
Solar-powered sails
Rocket Lab’s contracts kept coming. The Starling mission in July put technology in orbit to test the ability of spacecraft to fly in synchronised swarms while collecting science data with no need for ground resources.
In April 2024 it launched a South
Korean Earth-observation satellite and NASA’s Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) testing ways to replace rocket propellent with solar propulsion systems for deep space missions.
In June twin Prefire (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) CubeSats with far-infrared wavelength sensors lifted off from Mahia on a 10-month mission to measure heat loss near the Arctic and Antarctica. ‘Ready, Aim, Prefire’ and ‘Prefire and Ice’ have 525km low earth orbit trajectories, overlapping every few hours, monitoring sea level and weather changes to help improve climate and ice models.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, the Arctic has warmed more than 2.5 times faster than the rest of the planet, with roughly 60% of the energy that’s released into space not measured efficiently.
Milestone mission
After Surefire it was rapid fire with Rocket Lab celebrating 180 satellite deliveries and its 50th Electron launch at the end of June – “a rare feat in the history of spaceflight”. This ‘milestone mission’ was the first of five in a constellation of 25 nanosats (30kg-class) for French Internet-of-Things (IoT) company Kinéis.
The ‘No Time Toulouse’ mission, backed by private and public investors including the French government’s space agency, promises guaranteed transmission of specific data in near-real time to enhance global hi-tech connectivity. It will also enable automatic identification systems (AIS) for ship tracking, eventually scaling up to connect millions of IoT devices across multiple industries.
We’re the fourth most prolific launch provider in the world, “after the US, China, Russia it’s Mahia.”
Sir Peter Beck
Monitoring methane
Earlier in 2024 Rocket Lab helped establish the Mission Operations Control Centre (MOCC) at Auckland University in partnership with America’s Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) as part of its MethaneSAT project.
BayBuzz publisher Tom Belford, who had worked with EDF as communications and marketing chief – “his last honest employment” before coming to New Zealand – was instrumental in brokering this 2019 deal with the New Zealand Government.
With Rocket Lab gaining global credibility and the New Zealand Space Agency in place it was deemed timely to take on the MethaneSAT project with the government prepared to invest $26 million in the climate science collaboration.
MethaneSAT LLC is funded by EDF donors including the Bezos Earth Fund, Arnold Ventures, the Robertson Foundation and the TED Audacious Project alongside scientists from multiple universities and space agencies.
The state-of-the-art spectrometer technology can sense, measure, map and track methane from oil and gas facilities, landfill and agricultural sources, to inform local and international governmental policy.
“It’s a big deal and good politics for New Zealand to get involved in this major international partnership,” says Belford. “This is the most sensitive satellite built to fly over and spot methane emissions from industrial facilities, as well as agricultural methane emissions right down to the feedlot level.”
MethaneSAT was launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in
California in March 2024 aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX Transporter 10.
Methane mission control
New Zealand’s role is running the MOCC, established by Rocket Lab, to develop, maintain and operate the spacecraft software and systems and train operators at University of Auckland’s Te Pūnaha Ātea-Auckland Space Institute.
The operators track the satellite, manage its position and work through international ground-tracking stations to collect and share data with MethaneSAT’s climate change scientists and researchers.
The data harvested from around 50 major global regions will ‘validate and refine’ and be evaluated alongside data already gathered by Methane Air jet flights since August 2021.
MethaneSAT is now circling the Earth 15 times a day measuring changes in concentrations as small as three parts per billion. Rocket Lab will hand over mission control to Te Pūnaha Ātea later this year.
A number of New Zealand groups plan to make good use of the monitoring data when it’s made freely available toward the end of 2024. Interactive emissions data will be made public at no cost from www.MethaneSAT.org and on Google Earth Engine, a premier geospatial data platform used by over 100,000 experts and analysts.
Dr Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher of NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research), heading a team of leading atmospheric science and remote sensing researchers, will use the results to measure agriculture emissions.
They’re working alongside Catalyst: Strategic, a New Zealand-China joint research partnership, using models developed to interpret the data and determine the best locations to focus on.
Dr Mikaloff-Fletcher says New Zealand is the perfect test ground as it has an unusual greenhouse gas profile and world class greenhouse gas measurement and modelling capability.
NIWA’s atmospheric observing site at Lauder, near Alexandra, one of two Total Column Carbon Observing Network sites, is considered “the gold standard for validating greenhouse gas observing satellites”.
The local science team will also work on oil and gas sector emissions alongside researchers from Harvard University and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory as part of the MethaneSAT research.
Crowded skies
As at May 2024 there were more than 10,000 active satellites in various earth orbits for communication, earth observation, technology development, navigation and space science. Among them 6,000 Starlink comms satellites circling every 90 minutes.
Along with other space services companies, Rocket Lab is in demand to continue adding to that space traffic including in sensitive defence areas. In 2025 it has a $US32 million deal with the US Space Force that involves developing a spacecraft and command and control centre so the US military can test its ability to rapidly position satellites to investigate suspicious objects and respond to threats.
Space race escalates
Delivering its Neutron rocket next year will represent an ambitious step change for Rocket Lab as it vies for pole position in the escalating international space race, lining up alongside billionaire competitors including the SpaceX Falcon 9.
The US Government is seeking back up and redundancy options to deploy entire satellite constellations or cargo for the International Space Station or interplanetary missions to Mars or Venus.
Beck says competition is essential to drive accessible pricing, new capabilities and redundancy.
The first full assembly of Neutron’s new 3D printed Archimedes engine is currently undergoing extensive testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Centre in Mississippi. Archimedes, ideally reusable for up to 20 launches, is geared for frequent flights with less stress than other rocket engines and upgradeable as needed.
“We took the time to bring a mature design to the stand that has been thoroughly tested at component level, and to stand up an experienced team, manufacturing line, and test facilities to support long term production of Archimedes,” says Beck.
“Neutron will be a game changer … a reliable and cost-effective rocket with the capacity to lift up to 13,000kg to space,” says Beck.
Kiwi space economy
Ongoing investment in exploring and exploiting the final frontier is likely to bring big wins for the New Zealand economy and potentially the environment as the demand grows and clearer data on climate change informs decision making.
As the global space economy hits the trillions, Beck believes the skills, expertise and capabilities of New Zealand manufacturers, suppliers and machine shops associated with Rocket Lab will be in hot demand.
The company has “a fantastic reputation internationally” and being able to sell that expertise to trusted partners and allies will “open up places in international science partnerships for our scientists and academics” who can lead research and development.
He believes the time is right for the kind of out of the box thinking that New Zealanders are known for to improve life on Earth from space. “The next best thing to come from space hasn’t even been thought up yet.”
For Sir Peter Beck, his investors and those motivated by his payload of satellites and entrepreneurial enthusiasm, the sky is the limit and he plans to be there in every possible way.
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EIT back in our hands?
One of the government’s election promises was to disband the much lambasted Te Pūkenga ‘’mega-polytech’’, which was formed under the last government, beginning operations in April 2020.
Te Pūkenga brought the country’s 16 Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics together, including our own EIT Te Aho A Māui, as well as nine industry training organisations (ITOs).
Te Pūkenga has been a regular in the news cycle over the last four years, criticized for its frequent turnover of CEs, cost over-runs, and dwindling enrolments. Its establishment coincided with the arrival of COVID-19, which can’t have helped matters.
The establishment of Te Pūkenga was not the only change to the
vocational and education training (VET) system. In 2021, six workforce development councils were established to ensure the VET system met industry needs. Their role was to set standards, develop qualifications, and help shape the curriculum of vocational education. These too are for the chop, proposed to be reformed into new standards setting organisations.
Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds said earlier this month the government is asking for input on “reforms to replace the failed Te Pūkenga experiment with a financially sustainable, regionally responsive vocational education and training system that delivers the skills and training New Zealand needs”. A short six-week consultation proposal was announced in August. The government is proposing that
institutes with a pathway to financial sustainability will be allowed to stand alone while others will be grouped together in a federation, supported by Open Polytechnic. Little practical detail as to how this might work has been provided.
The HB Regional Economic Development Agency has been asked by our regional leadership group, the Matariki Governance Group, to coordinate a regional submission on the proposed changes. We have teamed up with Gisborne’s Trust Tairāwhiti to work on a proposal. We are asking for support from industry groupings, businesses, local government, community organisations, and of course iwi Māori, considering that our regions’ populations have a higher proportion of Māori learners than other parts of New Zealand.
Worryingly, the proposal is all but silent on the government’s obligations to mana whenua under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, as outlined in the Education and Training Act 2020. The proposal is not silent, however, on plans to remove equity funding, which would disportionately affect and, ultimately disadvantage, many of our learners, including those with low prior achievement, disabled learners, and Māori and Pacific learners.
You might question the benefit of equity funding in our constrained economic environment where the government, and pretty much everyone else, is trying to trim costs and stretch every dollar. The thinking behind equity funding is long-game thinking. It is predicated on the idea that improving the education and skill levels of disadvantaged learners leads to higher employment rates, better earnings, and better wellbeing overall. Of course the funding model needs to be the right model, with the right implementation, and with the appropriate monitoring and evaluation. Nonetheless, the proposal to remove equity funding is yet another example of the short-termism that so often afflicts our political thinking and by extension our economic performance as a country.
If we just think in terms of Māori in the Bay, according to Infometrics, in 2023 the Māori unemployment rate in the region was 7.8% compared with 3.8% for ‘all ethnicities’. Average earnings for Māori are lower than for other groups. Many of the industries that have been creating the largest number of new jobs for Māori are lower skilled industries. There is a lot to grapple with here regarding the nature of our economy; a decent vocational and education training system is only part of the solution but it is a significant part.
Back during the last restructure proposal in 2019, Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti strongly argued for maintaining regional autonomy over EIT. EIT had long been financially viable and brought cash reserves of over $30 million into Te Pūkenga. We will be asking, in our submission, for reassurance that the cash reserves held by EIT, and any accrued interest, will be available for reinvestment in our regions.
As well as being financially sustainable, EIT continues to have a strong track record where it matters most: delivering to learners and supporting industry and the wider community.
As well as being financially sustainable, EIT continues to have a strong track record where it matters most: delivering to learners and supporting industry and the wider community.
EIT’s retention of first year students from 2022 into 2023 was the highest among all New Zealand’s polytechnics despite Cyclone Gabrielle, which flooded the Taradale campus and disrupted operations in Tairāwhiti and EIT’s Auckland campus. First year student retention was 81 percent against a national average of 65 percent. EIT was also above the national average in the three other indicators of learner achievement and success: course completion, progression, and qualification completion.
A well-functioning and high quality VET system is essential if we want to continue building a workforce for today and the future. EIT is only one part of this system. The Ministry of Education, the Tertiary Education Commission, business, training organisations, and others all do their part. There needs to be learning opportunities for learners at all levels in a range of environments, from the classroom to the workplace. We need to let education and training providers work closely with industry to ensure they meet their changing needs, and we need to do what it takes to give all our learners the best chance possible to succeed. We need to give considered attention to the gaps and challenges in the system. Most of all, we need to stop embarking on poorly thought through and poorly implemented ‘’experiments’’.
The Hawke’s Bay Regional Economic Development Agency is hosting a regular column to stimulate conversation about our economy. We will share pieces of work and research that we are involved in and at times will open up this column space for guest writers.
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Ideas + Opinion
Dominic Salmon, 3R
Large batteries aren’t going
anywhere, and we’re ready
The way Kiwis get around is changing. We’ve all noticed the switch, from electric scooters, bikes, cars, trucks, buses, and even ferries – large batteries are here to stay.
Electric vehicles play an important role in our collective low emissions future. But how do we ensure a sustainable lifecycle for them before we hit the road?
Like most technologies, battery evolution is happening at pace. The chemical composition of batteries, their size, weight, and overall design, are all key considerations for battery resource recovery and how we can look after batteries throughout their lifecycle – or, as we call it in the waste industry, product stewardship.
Battery-powered vehicles aren’t new. There were electric carriages
and locomotives as early as the 1840s, even NASA’s Lunar rovers were battery powered. Over the past three decades we’ve seen rapid battery development, affecting how we communicate and get around.
Don’t batteries catch fire, though?
With any new technology, there are inherent risks, challenges, and opportunities.
We’ve all seen stories about lithium-ion battery fires in rubbish trucks, usually due to incorrect small battery disposal. And while it’s not large batteries causing these fires, it does highlight how all batteries should be carefully handled and de-charged. This is why expertly planned recycling and resource recovery pathways are crucial.
While we don’t have enough large batteries in New Zealand for them to be a problem yet, the resource
recovery sector is already planning ahead. It’s not often we get to design a solution before something becomes a problem, but creating a circular system for large batteries now means we can do just that.
Who’s involved?
E-waste was declared a priority product in 2020, meaning a product stewardship scheme must be designed for it. Led by a group of industry experts, the Battery Industry Group was established to design a separate scheme for large batteries, which would address global fears of dangerous mountains of end-oflife batteries, stockpiled and in landfills. Work was needed to understand possible material pathways including:
• refurbishment
• reuse in secondary life applications
• recycling
• and disposal
While we don’t have enough large batteries in New Zealand for them to be a problem yet, the resource recovery sector is already planning ahead. It’s not often we get to design a solution before something becomes a problem, but creating a circular system for large batteries now means we can do just that.
Data is king
The carbon footprint of large batteries, coupled with corrupt mining practices, are often cited as reasons for not switching to EVs. Despite this, globally, electrification is projected to increase lithium-ion demand by over 500 per cent by 2030.
New Zealand is a tiny nation at the bottom of the world, so working with international suppliers to address these issues can be tricky.
Thankfully, the Global Battery Alliance is developing a passport for large batteries. This includes:
• raw material provenance
• manufacturing
• carbon credentials
• human rights record
• battery use and performance
It is supported by EU directives and means every battery to market must have a passport, creating a trackable framework for transboundary movements.
Our proposed local scheme will take advantage of these passports, as they are key to our success.
How will we recycle them?
While there is no onshore large battery processing in New Zealand, there is offshore demand for black mass (one of the components of large batteries), though that creates transport challenges.
There is interest in battery recycling locally, but any potential investment in infrastructure must be supported by demonstrable demand. With that in mind, onshore infrastructure investment is likely to be geared toward converting batteries into black mass.
However, in pursuing a circular solution, we must prioritise reuse, before we ship the materials offshore. Ideally, we also want investment in both refurbishment and repurposing.
While a battery’s capacity and performance may no longer be suitable for propulsion of a vehicle, the battery retains significant energy storage capacity. We’ve seen a repurposing approach to this in practice recently, with Counties Energy converting 18 Nissan Leaf batteries into a Berm battery energy storage system for charging EVs in Mercer, Waikato. There are also opportunities to work with the energy sector on solar power storage systems using end-of-life EV batteries. Reflecting on lessons from Cyclone Gabrielle, the inclusion of battery energy storage systems from used EV batteries would have lessened the impact of communication and power interruptions. There were also examples of EVs being used to power pharmacy and essential services where generators were unavailable.
Reflecting on lessons from Cyclone Gabrielle, the inclusion of battery energy storage systems from used EV batteries would have lessened the impact of communication and power interruptions.
Continued evolution
Things are developing quickly – the chemistry and design of large batteries is constantly changing. For example, we’ve moved from cell to blade technology, and are now developing solid-state batteries. Evolving chemistries, coupled with enhanced durability and thermal stability, will increase batteries’ longevity further.
New Zealand must move quickly to make the most of these opportunities and any future scheme must have the agility to adapt and change to new materials.
Collaboration is key
With all of that in mind, it’s vital we collaborate across industry, government, NGOs, and our communities, to capitalise on the opportunities offered by large batteries, as a high value resource.
Any progress we can make relies on everyone playing their part to ensure a consistent supply and solution.
3R design, implement and manage product stewardship schemes for individual businesses or industry-wide groups. They also help businesses take a fresh look at their waste to first minimise and then recover what would otherwise be wasted.
Ideas + Opinion
Paul Paynter
Banks … we deserve better
‘Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin,’ Sir Josiah Stamp, a long-ago director of the Bank of England.
A good deal of the animus towards banks comes from their history of corruption. You may have seen some ancient coins where the edges have been clipped off. This ‘bankers share’ was melted down to make new money, which they mostly pocketed. In a similar way the ancient treasuries melted down gold and silver coins and mixed in some lesser metals, so that they could steal a portion of the precious metals.
Eventually people concluded that walking around with bags of coins wasn’t safe and a system of IOUs developed. The banks held the physical money in a safe place and trading was done with paper – a ‘Letter of Credit’. The system worked until bankers issued more letters of credit than they had currency to back. When such rumours found their way to depositors, they quickly sought to withdraw their money. We had our first recorded ‘bank run’ about 700 years ago.
What was realised about this time, is that if you issued more credit than there was hard money, it was not only profitable but, if used wisely, caused economic growth. Inventing money out of thin air was good business.
Today the creation of ‘money’ rests almost entirely in the hands of private sector banks. They have the limited ability to create, say $100,000 debt for you and a $100,000 asset for them, out of thin air. What they’re really doing is extending credit, like they do with your credit card. To be able to do this they need a banking license and there are 10 of these in NZ.
The banks are regulated by a Reserve Bank; the RBNZ in this country.
This modelling will be wrong. You can be quite accurate about fair to middling events, but absolutely hopeless at predicting rare events.
the Global Financial Crisis which, in 2008, almost brought down the entire global banking system.
Initially it was privately owned, but was shortly acquired by our government. The argument put forward by bankers is that the financial system is too important to be in the hands of politicians. Central banks are supposed to act freely and without undue government influence. You are entitled to guffaw at this point as the Governor and Board are appointed by the Minister and they have ‘informal discussions’ quite regularly.
The extension of credit creates significant risk as their reserves are only a fraction of the loans they have issued. In its latest annual report BNZ reports having almost $11b in capital reserves, while they have made loans of more than $100b.
If there is a major economic shock, loans go bad and losses are made, the BNZ would take the hit on their $11b in capital reserves. Once this is wiped out their depositors, who are owed $89b, might take a financial haircut. If the depositors get nervous there could be a ‘bank run’ where everyone turns up tomorrow and tries to withdraw their deposits. In this case the bank will collapse, unless the taxpayer bails them out. In 1990 the government had to step in to ensure that the BNZ didn’t collapse. You’re probably still paying for it.
The worst event in recent times was
The GFC caused governments to pressure central banks to adjust their regulations. The objective was to prevent irresponsible credit growth and avoid another boom-bust cycle. This resulted in the blockbuster financial framework of Basel 1, 2 and 3 – a complex risk management framework intended to ensure banks are 99.9% confident that they won’t lose more than the value of their capital reserves. This modelling will be wrong. You can be quite accurate about fair to middling events, but absolutely hopeless at predicting rare events. We can roughly predict the rainfall in July but cannot predict Cyclone Gabrielle. The same is true of financial events and this is due to the connectedness of the financial world and the ‘madness of crowds’. You can’t model panic.
What does this mean to a farming economy?
New Zealand is not part of the Basel Committee and doesn’t need to comply with Basel regulations. However, our big four banks are Australian-owned and Australia is part of the Basel Committee.
The new banking regulations try to relate a bank’s lending risk to their capital reserves. The required capital reserves to lend on housing might be 10%, to farms and businesses 15% and if business loans become ‘non-performing’ it might pop to 20%. These figures are illustrative only, but not so far from the mark.
Superficially, this makes sense, if you’re a banker in Basel. Where it is irrational is in the blessed backwater of rural New Zealand. By my reckoning NZ only has three businesses that have international credibility – the
Banks need to be encouraged to support farming businesses through cyclical downturns. It would be perfectly reasonable to judge the performance of a farm on a rolling 7-year basis, rather than annually. A bad year does not make a farm a bad business.
had gone down. These business loans and their associated capital reserves have forced interest rates up. It’s common to see term business interest rates around the 10% mark.
Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, has mentioned the high interest rates for business and farming to be a focus of a banking enquiry. What she has failed to acknowledge is that, it’s not the greedy banks but RBNZ regulation that is driving up interest rates. Technically government shouldn’t wade into such matters but the RBNZ’s Governor, Adrian Orr, needs some pressure from all fronts.
dairy industry, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and kiwifruit. In terms of earning our way in the world, we are still an agricultural country.
Farming businesses are inherently cyclical. In tough economic times a Chinese consumer might forego the fancy NZ infant formula for a cheaper alternative. Agricultural businesses are also synchronised so that all farmer returns within a sector are somewhat similar.
The dairy industry has been wildly successful over time, but has endured many downturns along the way. In 2014 and 2015 many dairy farms lost money. If the Basel framework was applied to such a downturn, the banks would have had to find a bucket of extra capital reserves to bank these businesses through. Essentially they would have reduce their ability to lend and reduce their profits. The Basel rules give strong signals – housing lending is safe and good; farming lending is risky and less desirable; loss-making farms with ‘non-performing loans’ are dangerous and bad.
The problem with this logic is that it favours a strong banking sector over a stable economy.
Once it’s built, your house generates very little by way of PAYE, GST and income tax. Most of all, it doesn’t create many jobs. Those dairy farms that lose money, two years in 10, are probably not ‘risky and bad’. In the old days a local banker would size them up and make a judgement call as to whether they should be backed. Now we are banked by machines who have limited knowledge, little nuance and no humanity.
The banks are rational and you won’t be surprised to hear that the proportion of lending for home loans had gone up and proportion of lending to businesses
These risk and interest rate dynamics have seen the rise of ‘shadow banks’ particularly in Australia. These are non-bank lenders that don’t have a banking license. Shadow banks lend ‘real money’ (it’s complicated), and for this reason the shadow banks typically charge about 3.5% more interest than the banks. This is a cost of capital that many farmers can’t bear, unless they become considerably more profitable. That can only happen if the price of food goes up.
Banks need to be encouraged to support farming businesses through cyclical downturns. It would be perfectly reasonable to judge the performance of a farm on a rolling 7-year basis, rather than annually. A bad year does not make a farm a bad business.
In the EU there are many farming enterprises that receive direct assistance from the EU and are somewhat insulated by cooperative structures to which they belong. They enjoy these protections for political reasons, but also to ensure food security, care of the land and their agrarian communities.
We need something more commercial and robust than the EU bureaucrats have dreamt up. It starts with some heterodox thinking in Wellington and the rejection of banal banking regulations, conjured up in Basel.
To be worth the journey, NZ’s forthcoming banking review must result in amendments to the Reserve Bank Act. At present the only RBNZ obligations are to control inflation and to protect the financial system. Neither of these ensure the underpinnings of economic growth. The business sector needs fairly priced and reliable access to credit or we risk becoming an economic basket case.
Paul Paynter is our resident iconoclast and cider maker. Weather permitting, he grows stuff at Yummyfruit.
A special clay exhibition returns as spring arrives, plus batches of unconventional wines and their unconventional makers...
Greg Collinge, Supernatural Wines.
Photo: Florence Charvin
UKU CLAY
Photo: Florence Charvin
Life Lizzie Russell
When you visit Annette Bull and Natham Crossam’s home on a cold and blustery morning to chat about clay, you can be assured of a couple of things. There will be good coffee and a warm welcome, and you’ll stay longer than planned, because there is so much ground to cover.
You walk in and you’re enveloped by a fantastic collection of art. I’ve known these two for close to 15 years and we reminisce about long ago exhibitions and artists we used to follow and series we loved and, yes, there’s a little bit of gossip too.
We’re here to chat about the upcoming group exhibition, Uku Clay at Arts Inc. Heretaunga, which these two organise to showcase work from around the country.
The first challenge though, is choosing a cup for the coffee. Casually stacked in a sturdy set of wooden shelves is the best collection of cups and mugs, from potters all over the country. The perfect visual representation of how connected and collaborative Annette and Natham are in the world of clay. Like many conversations even now, a year and a half on, we meander back to Cyclone Gabrielle. All that fractured because of it. All that’s still coming back together. The damage and repair at Waiohiki and how that affected the Taradale Pottery Club. There is a universality to the very particular moments shared. Annette’s parents had a landline and an old phone, so in this neighbourhood, they could get word out that here, close to the sea and river at Clive, they were ok.
We sip coffee and muse about what it takes to put an exhibition together. We talk about the personalities – heroes past, like Bruce and Estelle Martin, and veterans like Gaeleen Morley. Natham brings out a bubble wrapped package
and together we take in the vessel. That organic, rustic glaze, the angular planes, a weightiness that makes it a Gaeleen piece. Then comes another (pictured), an abstract vessel by celebrated Whanganui potter Rick Rudd. Natham pulls back the tablecloth on the kitchen table to show a large birdseye plan of the Russell Street gallery, with thumbnail photographs of the successful entries. These two have been working on placement. It’s a perfect way to play with the layout, grouping complementary pieces together, creating a narrative of sorts. I imagine there has been much movement at the table, shifting and replacing, completing this jigsaw puzzle.
Casually stacked in a sturdy set of wooden shelves is the best collection of cups and mugs, from potters all over the country. The perfect visual representation of how connected and collaborative Annette and Natham are in the world of clay.
We talk about the uniting force of a group exhibition, and an opening party. The family’s role in pulling this all together (thanks Max and Greta and Josh!). Things right across the arts in the Bay have felt fractured, but there are little bits of coming together, and Uku Clay is one of those.
The first Uku Clay exhibition was in 2018 and it’s been biennial since, making this one the fourth. This year’s selectors Peter and Judy Collis up in Auckland have made some strong decisions, and when Natham flicks through the folder of “in” entries, I can see a cohesive show in my mind’s eye. “It’s a tall show,” they laugh – lots of vessels and abstract pieces with height. And there are some for the wall too. The install is going to be a challenge. Selecting is done in Auckland like
a blind tasting. The Collises went through over a hundred entry images, all anonymous to them, and made their decisions without knowing who the majority were made by. After they’d confirmed their selection, they asked, “Did Rick have an entry in there? Did Gaeleen?” Obviously now, both Rick Rudd and Gaeleen Morley are part of the line-up, but that illustrates how the process works, that this time around they were’t able to recognise for sure the creations of two of the country’s most respected potters, showing that the work really must stand on its own two feet, so to speak. No bias for old mates here!
Natham and Annette will install the show, and once it’s in place, before the opening, Peter and Judy will examine the exhibition and decide the winners of the five prizes. The main prize, this year sponsored by Muse Gallery, is worth $2k and there are three other category cash prizes and an exhibition prize to be awarded.
We wind our way through a discussion about the long artistic process of finding a voice. I’m left thinking that it’s often the same for an art event. Annette’s development as a potter over the years is clear and logical and pleasurable to witness. Uku has a similar feeling to it. It’s developing, it’s getting better and more refined and more important in the wider arts scene as time rolls on.
Past shows have surprised and delighted me. And this one will do the same, differently. The breadth and depth of talent in New Zealand in the field of ceramic art is astounding and Uku Clay is not to be missed.
Uku Clay is part of the Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival Taster Series. It opens on Sunday, September 15 and runs until Friday, October 4. The 2026 exhibition is scheduled to return to Creative Arts Napier, where the inaugural one was held.
TAKE A BAKE
Story by Prue Barton, Mister D Dining
To bake or not to bake that is the question?
This takes me on a mission to ‘pound’ local pavements in search of some of the best crusts and baked goods in our neighbourhood. The breaking of bread and the rituals that surround this product have been known to man for eternity. The smell of freshly baked bread makes for an immensely satisfying experience and good bread is always a joy to look at and a pleasure to eat.
The story of flour is intriguing and its use in baking is varied. Flour refers to any grain that has been ground into a fine powder. From rye to rice, tapioca to corn, the range of flours now available is extensive, but the lead force in the flour world is wheat. A typical grain of wheat is about 6mm long and 3mm thick. It has three parts – the endosperm, the bran and the germ. During milling the wheat kernels are cracked and finely ground.
The variety of breads now available is staggering, but for me the hero is the sourdough loaf. Although leavened bread may not be recognized at first glance, its flavour and texture are a dead giveaway, and it has the added advantage of having long keeping capabilities. The pain de campagne (country bread) in France is
Photos by Stephen Robinson
typically a large round loaf made from natural leavening. With sourdough bread the slower fermentation process provides additional nutrients and antioxidants and the prebiotics tend to help keep your gut bacteria happy.
Our fascination with bread started when we visited the famous Poilane bakery in Paris in 1993. Tasting their country bread with its chewy, grainy flavours was a complete ‘light bulb’ moment. David and I realized that this traditional style of bread making was a pure art form. Obviously their bakers were skilled in the subtleties of fermentation and so it was right back in the 90’s that David experimented with a starter he inoculated with wine grapes. And it is this starter that we still use at Mister D.
Caring for our starter (which we have named Thelma) is like a long love affair as it needs to be tended to daily. Wednesday is the start of our baking process for the weekend as it takes three days and many steps to achieve the fermentation, rises
Our fascination with bread started when we visited the famous Poilane bakery in Paris in 1993. Tasting their country bread with its chewy, grainy flavours was a complete ‘light bulb‘ moment.
and baking. Saturday is also the day we bake sourdough and ciabatta for Chantal Organics. This maintains our long -standing relationship with our Napier neighbour.
Just around the corner from Mister D in Hastings Street is the Lisbon Artisan Pastry Shop. Owners Sofia and Tiago arrived from Portugal over 5 years ago with the aim to set up a small and exclusive bakery. The piece de resistance is their Portuguese Tart which they bake scores of every day. Their secret recipe has been fine-tuned over many years and the result is the most addictive mouth popping custard tart. Stephen Robinson, my trusty
photographer and I were lucky to arrive just when a tray of the tarts was being placed in the oven. Like a couple of kids in a candy store we eagerly watched them baking and then the eventual tasting of the crisp, creamy, sweet little numbers.
The literal meaning of Pasteis de Nata is Portuguese for cream pastries. They were first made over 300 years ago in a monastery west of Lisbon. Monks developed the custard-filled recipe with sugar and surplus egg yolk left from using egg whites to launder clothes.
By making bread on a regular basis professional bakers develop intuitive skills which may lead them to experiment with different flours and investigate the current demand for gluten free baking.
One such local baker is the highly regarded and well-known chef Vicki Bruns-Bolderson, whose company The Gluten Free Maker specializes in baking gluten free breads, cakes and pizza bases. The original motivation for her
LEF TO RIGHTT: Andi and David at Mister D. David’s sour dough starter from 1993. Lisbon’s Sofia and Tiago bring a taste of Portugal to Napier.
product was the fact that she was diagnosed as being highly gluten intolerant and consequently any bread that she tried was tasteless and uninteresting.
Vicky experimented to craft her recipes to get them right and now her hand made treats are in hot demand. Her products are made using her own nongummy, non-gritty gluten-free flour blends, which she mentioned took five months to develop balancing brown rice flour, white rice flour, tapioca, potato starch, buckwheat and corn.
Vicki also uses Chantal Organics for many of her ingredients. I timed my visit to her kitchen just at the right moment to watch a batch of her delicious breads coming out of the oven and to see for myself the love and care that had gone into baking them. Vicki delivers locally on a Wednesday and also couriers boxes throughout the North Island. Vicki takes orders via email. (vicki@thegfmaker.com)
On the ‘bake vine’ I hear that Long Island Delicatessen in Hastings ticks all the boxes. Kristy and her team bake daily, are passionate about quality and
ethically sourced ingredients. With the development of the Municipal Building, curiosity led Kristy to view the space and what stemmed from that was a vision to create this New York styled delicatessen.
The name of the business stems from the fact that they have a long display counter to showcase the healthy deli range of salads and bespoke baking. As an added option they also have a comprehensive catering menu. Email enquiries to catering@longislanddeli.co.nz
On the hunt for the ‘humble’ cheese scone I tried theirs and encountered a holy grail of cheesiness. The perfect scone is a matter of debate, but the most important ingredient is a quality cheddar cheese and a little parmesan with a pinch of cayenne. I am told a light touch in the mixing helps to keep the scone fluffy.
Another true-blue CBD bakery in Napier is the Yeast Coast Baking Co. Twenty three years ago Greg and Annabel Pederson moved from Rotorua, giving up their corporate jobs
to start a new life in the Hawke’s Bay. With young children it was a time for them to spread their wings and start a business from scratch.
Greg originally employed a German baker to assist with the nuances of baking and especially that of sourdough. These days he bakes alone and enjoys the solace of his craft. Most of their flour is sourced from Organic Flour Mills in Palmerston North. This mill’s primary goal is to provide the healthiest grain and flour they can for their customers.
You can taste the love in every loaf with them at the Napier Urban Farmers Market every Saturday and the Hastings Hawke’s Bay Farmers Market on Sunday. Their artisan breads and pastries are made the old-fashioned way with traditional long ferment methods and their delicious pastries are butter rich.
With the plan to shop for the weekend, I gather up some ingredients and start to conjure up a salad recipe which will involve, (you guessed it) sourdough.
CLOCKWISE: Kristy at Long Island Deli. Vicki Bruhns-Bolderson, The Gluten Free Maker. The team at Yeast Coast Baking Co.
Serves 4
This rustic salad is a great way to use up stale ciabatta bread or peasant bread and is a simple assembly. This salad makes a great lunch dish or a side for barbecued meats, roast chicken or grilled fish. Obviously the ingredients are more bountiful in the summer, but fresh is always welcome in the winter too.
200g stale ciabatta or sourdough bread, roughly torn up
600g heirloom tomatoes (red and yellow if available) or vine tomatoes
½ small red onion, finely diced Maldon sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon chopped capers, drained
1 red pepper, charred and peeled (optional)
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Extra virgin olive oil
Small bunch of basil, torn
Toss all the ingredients together in a rustic serving bowl.
Drizzle the red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil over the roughly torn up bread and with your hands flick all the ingredients together.
Taste and add a little more salt if necessary.
If you enjoy the flavor of anchovies you could add at this stage and then finish with torn basil leaves.
Prue Barton at Mister D
ATYPICAL AND SUPER-SIPPICAL
Life Wine / Yvonne Lorkin
Hawke’s Bay is New Zealand’s oldest and second-largest wine region boasting over 200 vineyards and 76 wineries. It’s also an incredibly diverse region and one that I unashamedly call ‘the ultimate wine region’ because there’s almost no grape you can’t grow and no wine style you can’t make here.
We produce world class, conventional Syrah, Chardonnay and Bordeaux-style reds, yet there’s an expanding population of tiny local producers pushing the envelope and blazing different trails with lesser-known grapes, and techniques that set them apart stylistically. Let us introduce you to three of them.
Photos by Florence Charvin
Supernatural
Greg Collinge’s journey into wine began, by accident in 2009. “I was selling grapes back then. But when the buyer reneged on me, I and my then winemaker partner decided to start a wine company in the immediate aftermath of the GFC!”
Greg’s brand began life with the name ‘AndCo’ or &Co which was meant to represent the concept of wine being better with company. Nice idea but in 2010 his designers (Arch and Jane MacDonnell of Inhouse) suggested trying a better name. “By then we’d switched to farming our vineyard organically and knew we wanted to go down a more natural path, hence how, over several glasses of wine at the late, great SPQR, we came up with Supernatural.”
Greg’s vineyard sits below his accommodation business (Millar Road) overlooking Haumoana. “Most people think of Hawke’s Bay vineyards as gravels and being about ‘hot’ reds and whites. My block is on hard, lime-rich clay with volcanic topsoil. It’s a wee
OPPOSITE: Greg Collinge, Supernatural
bit elevated (60-90 metres) and just 2km from the coast. So it’s warmer at night and cooler by day than a typical Hawke’s Bay vineyard and therefore suited to the aromatic varieties. He also sources fruit from Gisborne and Martinborough for certain wines.
“The Green Glow and The Paranormal come from a variety of Millton’s vineyards in Gisborne,” he adds. “They’ve been farming biodynamically for close to 40 years. I think there’s a wonderful ‘Millton seam’ which runs through all wines off their blocks. Our Quiet Earth comes mostly from a block at Dry River managed by Lance Redgwell at Cambridge Road. Martinborough Pinot Noir is my favourite style in NZ with its earthiness and chalkiness.”
Collinge says he generally tries to make all his wines to reflect their place and time, rather than following a recipe. All Supernatural wines go through malolactic fermentation and as little sulphur as possible is added, depending on the stability of the wines. “Three of the 2022s only had 20ppm versus an overall limit in New Zealand of 300ppm,” he explains.
Organics was inspired by Greg’s own progression toward a healthier lifestyle as he got older. “I had to start working out again and eating better to lose all the weight I’d put on in my 30s,” he laughs. “My minimalist winemaking approach was inspired by the exciting wines I was tasting from places like Slovenia and Friuli when we were developing our style.”
Collinge is also a fan of chilled red wines leading to developing a Syrah/ Malbec blend named ‘Paranormal’. “I’ve been lucky to drink some deliciously ‘salty’ reds on my travels around places like Sicily and its volcanic soils. Paranormal was inspired by these adventures and I love the balance between the fruit and the acidity. It’s a really versatile wine to sip in the sun or enjoy with barbequed fatty meats.”
He’s also a huge fan of amber or ‘orange’ wines, crafting one called ‘Green Glow’ each year. “It’s like making red wine but with white grapes,” he explains. The skins are left in
“My minimalist winemaking approach was inspired by the exciting wines I was tasting from places like Slovenia and Friuli when we were developing our style.”
Greg Collinge
during the beginning of fermentation and this gives tannic structure and the ability for these wines to age well in bottle.” Greg also believes he was the first company in New Zealand to make a skin-fermented Sauvignon Blanc, despite Sauvignon being our most planted grape. “That was in 2013, and that wine has developed spectacularly in bottle since then.”
However, Greg agrees it’s tough out there when it comes to selling wine. “I took 2021 off because of Covid then Cyclone Gabrielle forced me to take 2023 off as well. Yet all the work I’d done pre-Covid building my distribution network, meant I was lucky enough to sell most of my 2022 wines –but the challenge is still to sell the rest of my stock. I hear a lot of folk saying ‘survive until 2025’ because it seems that globally inflation and cost of living pressures have put the brakes on a lot of discretionary spending. And that hits people like us hard.”
Stepping away from the pressure occasionally is important self-care and for Greg this means indulging his cricket obsession, listening to down-tempo, world-electronica music, and walking dogs. “I adore dogs, and they seem to like me, so I spend a lot of time walking various hounds at Te Mata Peak.”
Organised Chaos
Hayden Penny graduated from EIT with a Bachelor of Wine Science and a Bachelor of Viticulture, and took a job as assistant winemaker at Te Awa before travelling the world, making wine, and moving back to Hawke’s Bay permanently in 2010 to work for William Murdoch Wines in the Gimblett Gravels.
In 2014 he moved coastward and began making wine for the Supernatural Wine Co, and then further toward the beach to become Vineyard Manager and Winemaker for Te Awanga Estate, which is where he’s currently based. And yet the urge to go on a side-quest was strong within him, which is why, a few years back, Hayden began a life of Organised Chaos.
“It’s life right? He grins. “My wife Tarryn and I both work full-time and we have an 8 year old (Otis) and our 19 year old daughter (Carys) has just started university. So juggling work/ life/play is organised chaos!”
Hayden has an experimental outlook to crafting his wines. “Our Gamay Noir is made initially by a process called carbonic maceration. This is an enzymatic fermentation that occurs inside the berry before crushing, and gives the wine a lovely candied and floral profile, typical of the Beaujolais nouveau wines of France,” he says. Gamay is one of the rarest grapes in New Zealand, yet Hayden’s managed to secure a special parcel.
“Our Sparkling Pinot Noir is made in the Petillant Naturel (Pet Nat) style which means we bottle before the end of ferment and allow the remaining natural sugars to finish fermenting in the bottle.” That’s what gives the wine its trademark, almost unstoppable, fizz. “I’ve been making Pet Nats since 2017,” Hayden adds. “I love how fun and fresh they are. But they can be quite stressful to make. Choosing when to bottle is very time-specific, but popping a bottle
on the deck in the sun with friends, far outweighs that stress.”
He’s also developing a following for his chenin blanc and albarino. “I think stylistically, those grapes really suit our young soils and they’re perfect for kiwi summer drinking.”
For Hayden, winemaking is about the land and the fruit expressing itself with minimal intervention. “As a grower first, I work all season to produce the best possible fruit from any given site. I believe that making wine tells the story of that season, and to do that story justice, you need to work with what you have.” Up until 2023 Hayden worked with three vineyards, but Cyclone Gabrielle destroyed the Petane vineyard in Esk Valley, where Hayden got what he believes was the best Pinot Gris in Hawke’s Bay.
“Hopesgrove (owned by Pieter and Annabelle Koopman) is the home of my Syrah and previously my Chardonnay. It’s a north-facing, hillside vineyard on beautiful limestone soils in Pakipaki ... so say no more!” he laughs. Hayden’s other preferred site is the Two Terraces vineyard in Mangatahi. “It’s Ian and Linda Quinn’s baby, a block planted on ancient, free-draining, alluvial river terraces which is absolutely perfect for our Gamay Noir, Chenin Blanc and Albarino.”
But it’s a competitive, cutthroat business being in the wine game at the moment, especially when you have a full time job, a family and your own business. So how does he decompress?
“I love the outdoors, land or sea” he says. “The fresh air, peace and thrill of
“I’ve been making Pet Nat’s since 2017. I love how fun and fresh they are. But they can be quite stressful to make. Choosing when to bottle is very time-specific, but popping a bottle on the deck in the sun with friends, far outweighs that stress.”
Hayden Penny
the chase that comes with hunting and fishing really spin my wheels. Plus I love spending time with the whānau,” he adds. “My son Otis loves coming to the vineyard but he’s not quite at wine stage. And Carys is 19 so she definitely thinks it’s cool having a wine dad,” he laughs.
Kenzie
Dave Mackintosh’s family originally came from Scotland and settled in Ahuriri, Tutira and Putorino in Hawke’s Bay. Dave grew up around farming and had a love for chemistry and art, so winemaking felt like a natural fit.
He worked on local vineyards in the late nineties and made wine here until 2005 before moving to the Yarra Valley outside of Melbourne. “Over there I started two small wine businesses and Kenzie was a little sub-brand that focussed on lo-fi, interesting techniques in Chardonnay and Savagnin (not Sauvignon),” he explains. “I love the name and label, so I continued it on this side of the Tasman.”
Kenzie is named after Dave’s great grandmother Annabella (Nana Kenzie).
“She was a strong, independent Scottish woman who, in 1923, left her family at the age of 23 to start a new life in Ahuriri,” he says. “She went through a lot, she took so many risks and was a total inspiration. My brand features a Scottish wildcat to symbolise that spirit of hers, of embracing risk, independence and trusting ourselves.”
Embracing risk and following his instincts is intrinsically connected to
Hayden Penny, Organised Chaos
his winemaking philosophy. “I try to use minimal intervention, and I don’t make any additions apart from a little sulphur. I also don’t use filtration or fining and can accept a few imperfections.” Mackintosh also uses fairly uncommon techniques like picking earlier than most, wild yeast fermentation, low sulphur and fermenting his whites on their skins.
“I’ve never felt too comfortable adding things to wine or seeing vineyards overly sprayed. My day job in the Yarra didn’t allow me to push the envelope and yet my mates and I were drinking amazing wines from natural producers. So we used this as inspiration.”
Today all of the vineyards he sources fruit from are organically managed.
“My main requirement is that my partners love their site, respect their vines, and are great people,” he says. “I also like to mix up the soil types, so I have vineyards from young alluvial soils at Paritua and TK Vineyard in Bridge Pā, limestone in the Raukawa Hills on the Geenty’s Vineyard.” One vineyard and
grower Dave wishes he was still working with is Phil Barber at Petane in Esk Valley. “He’s such a dude who had such a beautiful vineyard before the cyclone destroyed it.”
One of Dave’s favourite wines is his Little Dreamer Sauvignon Blanc. “My first serious New Zealand winemaking job back in the early 2000’s was at a huge, conventional Sauvignon producer. I remember questioning why we didn’t use wild yeast, barrel fermentation or lees stirring and asked if anyone had tried fermenting it on skins before. The reaction wasn’t overly warm.” He was laughed at but held onto those ideas.
“When I returned to Hawke’s Bay, I had to do just that. I’ve made a wine that’s still unashamedly sauvignon, but has savouriness and a chalky, crunchy texture.”
Dave also makes Duet, a chilled red that’s gaining popularity. “It’s a play on the artistic term chiaroscuro, where light balances with shadow. I take this as inspiration for Duet using extracted Syrah blended with rosé to produce a
“I try to use minimal intervention, and I don’t make any additions apart from a little sulphur. I also don’t use filtration or fining and can accept a few imperfections.”
Dave Mackintosh
fresh, balanced wine where savoury aspects are matched with the fruitiness. Blending is really the most artistic part of winemaking so I enjoy this process a lot,” he muses.
Being back home also gives him the energy to grow and thrive. “My family have always been supportive and have invested in my business over the years. My partner helps me pack orders and listens to my many issues,” he laughs, “and I even put the kids on the tools waxing bottle tops! He winds down by cooking, eating and listening to a lot of music and ‘geeky’ wine podcasts. I’ve always been artistic and painted my whole life, so if time and motivation align, I like to do this as much as possible. That’s descended into creating new artwork for my labels or trade posters which I love to do.”
But being in business for yourself isn’t easy and times are tough out there in wine land. “The last 3 years have been seriously challenging for Hawke’s Bay, with two cool, hard seasons followed by a low-yielding but amazing 2024 vintage, that’s really put the squeeze on. There are cost pressures for everyone; growers, producers, retailers, restaurants and consumers, we’re all in the same boat,” he shrugs. He feels winegrowers need to engage with consumers more and encourage them to buy from family businesses and independents, support local restaurants, or buy direct. “It’s way better than handing over our money to the supermarket chains. And we’re making better and more interesting wines in Hawke’s Bay and Aotearoa than ever before, so we need to tell that story.”
Yvonne Lorkin is a wine writer, the Co-Founder and CTO of WineFriend (NZ’s No.1 personalised wine subscription service) and she’s a proud, born and bred Hawkesbaylien. winefriend.co.nz or yvonnelorkin.com
Dave Mackintosh, Kenzie
Life Wellbeing / Janine Couchman
Creatures of habit
We are fortunate to live in one of the best places in the world to experience spring. At this time of year, Hawke’s Bay’s abundant sunshine, colourful blossoms, and new growth remind us of the beauty and renewal that this season brings. What better time to nurture some new growth in your own life?
Let’s harness this spring energy to create positive change that matters to you.
The power of habit
Did you know that at least 45% of our waking behaviour is automatic, shaped by ingrained habits rather than conscious decisions? Habits not only save us time and energy as we move through the day, they are also a powerful determinant of our overall lifestyle. While motivation and willpower can come and go, habits stick around with minimal effort. By intentionally cultivating beneficial habits, we can harness this automaticity to enhance our health, productivity, and well-being, leading to lasting positive change.
Where do I start?
Think of a habit you’d like to embrace. Maybe you would like to go for regular morning walks, drink more water, exercise regularly, or read more. Whatever it is, considering the following will help you get started: Know your reason: Why do you want this habit in your life? How will it benefit you or the people you care about? Understanding your motivation is crucial. Ensure this is something you genuinely want to do, not just something you feel you should do. Motivation through guilt or obligation is unsustainable. Choose habits you genuinely want to pursue.
Start small: Begin with a micro-habit. If a 30-minute workout feels effortful, try 10 minutes. Small changes in behaviour can lead to significant improvements when they are consistently practiced. Make the habit as small as necessary to ensure success. You can grow from there.
Anchor the new habit: Link the new habit to an existing one to make it easier to remember and perform. This works especially well for small, daily habits. For example, when you turn on the coffee machine (existing habit), have a glass of water (new habit). Or when you brush your teeth (existing habit), follow it up with 10 push-ups (new habit). The closer the two behaviours can be linked together, the less conscious effort you will need, and the more likely the new behaviour will stick.
Love what you do: The best change happens when you feel good. If the habit isn’t enjoyable, you are less likely to stick with it. Find an activity that you genuinely enjoy, or think about how you could add enjoyable elements to enhance an activity you aren’t initially thrilled to do. Remember you want to do this and it is important to you – even if you only love the feeling after you’ve done it!
Make yourself accountable: Accountability can make all the difference in making a habit stick. Whether it’s through meeting a friend for a workout, joining a class, or scheduling the activity in your calendar, having someone or something to keep you accountable increases your chances of success. Connect it to your identity: When a habit becomes part of your identity it is not likely to fade on you. Decide to see the habit as a part of who you are, for instance “I am an active person who exercises regularly.” This identity might not feel genuine initially, but with time it will become powerfully connected to how you see yourself. Understand obstacles: Finally, identify the obstacles that may prevent you from developing your new habit. Common obstacles include:
• Lack of time: Many of us are stretched thin with work, family, and social commitments. Create time and space to prioritize behaviours that benefit you. You may need to communicate what
needs to change with the people in your life.
• Lack of routine: Changes to your routine and environment, such as during travel or school holidays, can disrupt good habits. Expect this and either make a plan to maintain consistency during these times, or accept the break and enjoy getting back into routine when you can.
• Health challenges: Sometimes sickness or injury can force a necessary break from a habit you enjoy. It can be difficult to get started again, especially when it feels like you are starting from scratch. Plan for a gradual return (perhaps going back to a microhabit) to make restarting easier.
• Lack of ability: Sometimes habits don’t stick because they require skills you haven’t mastered yet. If the habit you want is a stretch from your current abilities, that’s great! You have the opportunity to grow. Find the guidance, support or training you need to get better at the behaviour as you embed it as a habit.
You’ve got this
Despite our best efforts, making healthy habits stick can be challenging. Don’t beat yourself up when you experience a setback. Figure out what went wrong and start again. You will learn what works as you go. Use the habits you already have as a tool and you will be on the path to creating lasting change. Long after your initial motivation has worn off, the habit will continue. Welcome spring and take this opportunity to nurture new growth, building healthy habits that will serve you well into the future.
Janine Couchman is a personal trainer and fitness coach specialising in strength training women of all ages and stages. As well as private coaching, she delivers an eight week group programme at Peak Fitness and Health. She can be found at janinecouchman.com and @JaninecouchmanPT
Photo: Florence Charvin
Life Mouthy Broad / Jess Soutar Barron
I am not a robot
I have a new friend. It’s following me around like a stalker: I’m here for you. Can I help? What do you need? Whatever it is you’re up to I’m in. AI is suddenly everywhere. It has slid into my DMs with a perky Ask Me Anything.
I ask what it wants from me. It’s response is that it doesn’t want anything but it does appreciate clear questions, feedback on performance, respectful and courteous interactions, and engaging conversations that “challenge my abilities and help me learn”.
I compliment it on being self-aware. It says, “I’m not truly self-aware…my responses are generated based on patterns I was trained on…”
I type: That sounds to me like you know yourself very well.
It types: That’s a great point! I have been designed to have a high level of self-knowledge (which) allows me to communicate more effectively about what I can and cannot do … this self-knowledge is still fundamentally different from human self-awareness. My “self-knowledge” is purely a product of my programming, whereas human self-awareness is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that is not fully understood.
I type: I’m just a product of my programming too.
It types: What a fascinating perspective!
This bot is a sassy, opinionated chatterbox so I dub her Lisa Simpson. She tells me it’s a creative, playful choice and although she’s not a fan of donuts she does appreciate the spirit of the name. Then she says, “Let’s keep the conversation going! D’oh!”, just to prove she understands my intertextual referencing.
I use Lisa Simpson when I’m writing about satire and want to ensure I understand correctly the difference between parody and pastiche. She gives me a simple explanation with illustrative examples taken from Shakespeare.
I also use Lisa to give me some conclusions on quite a complex data set. She provides a number of answers and cites them so I can check the sources are bonafide.
Then I ask Lisa to give me the meaning of life as a limerick, whether I should eat the last Tim-Tam and who the 47th president of the USA will be.
I spend so much time asking Lisa Simpson stupid questions that my quality-writing-time gets too squashed to be useful and I find myself up at midnight trying to piece together a decent column.
I ask Lisa Simpson to write my column for me. She produces a fairly decent first draft in two seconds (which is here if you’re interested).
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein lens. Surely, this year’s indi-hit Poor Things is a parable on the human desire to create artificial intelligence in its own form? A creature that is like us, but better. Are we not Pygmalion?
Like our naive dreams of hover-craft highways in the sky, there’s a divide between what we imagine AI could be and what AI actually will be. What we’re creating together isn’t going to be as emotionally complex as Bella Baxter, or as interesting as the Monster, or as innocent as Galatea. It’s just going to be another bit of kit we take for granted, a killer app that quickly becomes our daily.
She scrapes the BayBuzz back catalogue for intel, then pushes out a copycat column talking about herself in my Mouthy Broad voice.
What it shows me – beyond that she is a vainglorious Narcissus – is that I use too many similes, rhetorical questions, references to Greek gods and exorbitantly pompous verbiage where short words would do. AI is not just a therapist, an assistant and a research librarian, it’s a coach too, revealing the best and the worst of us back to ourselves, prompting us to ‘try harder’.
That’s what we need to be telling AI too. Whether we like it or not, together we are raising this fledgling cyber-cuckoo. We’re chewing off bits of our collective intelligence, partially digesting it, then spitting it into the waiting mouth where it’s regurgitated. The only human thing about AI is it’s a work in progress, just like all of us.
So when it responds, we have a duty of care to think critically and tell it to try harder. We need to prompt it to have another go and come back with something better. We are Socrates with an eager yet empty student traipsing around behind us hanging off our every word.
Literature has been preparing us for AI since ages ago. Who hasn’t wished for a KITT or a HAL to train up and make life easier? Even in the 1800s we were hypothesising on AI through
What is important through this new tech change is that we maintain our humanness. That means working out what it is to be human, what human looks like, how ‘human’ feels, so we can spot the fake. With AI, we must do what humans do best: overthink. Take a philosophical stance and apply personal ethics, be critical, curious, optimistic yet sceptical, questioning and demanding. Do what we did when we first got crayons, or a typewriter, or a smart watch: play. AI is not something to fear, shy away from, or shun, it’s just a tool. We are not Baby Reindeer and AI is not Martha-the-stalker telling us “I wish humans had a chin zip … [I’d] just unzip them and tuck myself away.”... um, well, actually …
I tried to dig deep and write ethics myself but then asked Lisa Simpson to do it. She made initial suggestions, then made them again in iambic pentameter just to show off:
Be wary of bias, privacy’s gold, Stay transparent as AI takes hold. Keep people safe, protect knowledge well, Be wise as you wield this potent spell. Help workers thrive, so they’re not replaced, Kindness to humans, as rules are embraced.
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