March 2016
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This Sporting Life Page 30
Forster leaves with no regrets Hugh de Lacy Tony Forster, the Scotsman charged with drilling health and safety into New Zealand’s extractives industry in the wake of the 2010 Pike River coalmine disaster, is heading home with the satisfaction of a job well done. Formerly Her Majesty’s Principal Inspector of Mines for the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Forster was head-hunted three years ago by the Government to fill the new role of Chief Inspector Extractives of Worksafe NZ’s High Hazards Unit. As such his job was to put in place the performance-based codes of practice that were missing when the Health and Safety in Employment Act (HSE) came into force in 1991. The key problem with the HSE, identified by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Pike River
New test for manuka honey
disaster that killed 29 miners, was that it failed to replace the old prescriptive workplace safety regimes when it moved to a performance-based system. That led to the breakdown in extractives industry safety inspectorate that allowed Pike River to operate in a dangerous manner. The changes that have occurred in the industry since then have been “seismic,” Foster told Business North. “The first thing we put in place was the Health and Safety in Employment (Mining Operations and Quarrying Operations) Regulations, which came into effect on December 16 [2013]. “That put a number of key components into the regulations, of which the main ones were establishing a health and safety management system built around the concept of principal hazards, and establishing core competence and
continuing professional development for safetycritical post-holders,” Forster said. Principal Hazard Management Plans addressed hazards that had the potential for multiple casualties in a single catastrophic event, or in a series of repeating incidents. “This was a massive change for New Zealand, and it does to a degree follow some of the model legislation in Australia, but it also introduced another concept called Principal Control Plans. “These [plans] are the fundamental elements within the new regulations that really tie the management system together for all mines and tunnels,” he says. The regulations also cover tunnels under construction, “and that is again really important given the growth in the tunnelling industry in New Zealand.” Forster is proud of the legislation which he says
embraces the best of international standards, to the degree that he believes “other parts of the world would do well to copy what New Zealand’s done. “New Zealand has moved from being at the back of the queue with many of these issues, but now people are looking quite enviously at what New Zealand has achieved over the past three years, because it really does represent a significant body of work.” WorkSafe NZ was about halfway through the process of introducing approved codes of practice to support both the Act and the regulations. The various groups – quarries, alluvial miners, goldminers, drillers, tunnellers, surface and underground miners – had started to gel into a broad group under the Extractives banner. Forster attributed the success of the changes he had introduced to the support and commitment he had received from the industry.
Students from Hilltop School joined ith residents from Liston Heights Retirement Village recently at a propagation planting day at the Wairakei Estate development near Taupo. An ambitious project which promises to have far-reaching benefits for the Taupo region, the estate is the vision of three families who collectively purchased the land in 2004 and is one of the most significant and diverse pastoral farming projects in the Southern Hemisphere. See Story page 4
Hugh de Lacy Marketers of ordinary honey trying to exploit the rising demand and market premium for manuka honey are going to have their work cut out now that researchers have developed a new test. Scientists from the Unique Manuka Factor Honey Association (UMFHA), Analytica Laboratories and the marketing company Comvita have collaborated to produce a test to authenticate the purity of the product, which is believed to have anti-bacterial properties. New Zealand honey last year generated around $250m in export returns, a rise of 34% on the previous year, and double the value of 2012 exports. Manuka honey enjoys a substantial premium in the United Kingdom and Chinese markets, but previous authenticity tests were limited by the fact that bees will take pollen from any flower and do not collect one variety exclusively. But alongside the sensory tests of colour, taste and viscosity, the scientists have recently developed one that identifies manuka’s unique chemical markers. The same can be done with other honey varieties, such as borage, so their own unique features can be exploited in marketing. The new test allows honey to be produced to a high level of floral-source purity, meaning that producers could offer different products in much the same way that winegrowers do.
INSIDE
Enjoying the Wairakei Way...... Students from Taupo’s Hilltop School joined with residents from Liston Heights Retirement Village recently at a propagation planting day at the Wairakei Estate development. Covering nearly 26,000 hectares of land near Taupo, Wairakei Estate is the vision of three families who collectively purchased the land in 2004. It is one of the most significant and diverse pastoral farming projects in the Southern Hemisphere, and promises to have far-reaching benefits for the Taupo region. See story page 4
Ngai Tahu housing project - PAGE 2
A2 milk gaining traction - PAGE 2
Meet the ‘Mother of Brewing’ - PAGE 3
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