November, 2019 - The Profit

Damon Harvey

From fruitbowl to foodbowl

Hastings was once branded as the Fruitbowl of New Zealand but a proposed $18 million Food Innovation Hub is set to position Hastings and Hawke’s Bay as the nation's food capital. Hastings District Council has been the champion of an idea first put forward by local businessman Trevor Taylor in 2013 to develop a one-stop shop that will be used...

Major Award for Airport Gateway

The Watchman Road Intersection Upgrade Project (The Kuaka Gateway), has scooped the award for Infrastructure Project of the Year at the NZ Airport Association’s annual awards held in Auckland. Sponsored by Beca Airports, the awards were presented at a black-tie event held at The Auckland Museum Events Centre on Thursday October 24th before an audience of representatives from throughout New...

The war for talent – Hawke’s Bay’s Talent Attraction Strategy

Hawke’s Bay is buzzing. Our local economy is one of the best performing in regional New Zealand. Consumer confidence is high, unemployment is at a 10 year low. The labour market is tight and that means that competition for workers (not only in Hawke’s Bay, but around New Zealand) is expected to remain strong. Our businesses are doing well, but...

Fingermark & Luke Irving – Making a mark on the global fast food scene

Luke Irving has big aspirations to leave an indelible mark on the global technology scene from Havelock North, as well as creating a Silicon Valley styled technology scene nurturing Hawke’s Bay talent. Luke, the founder of a global tech company Fingermark which is leading the development of applied computer vision and deep learning computer machine technology, uplifted his team of...

Mark Matthews – Making his Mark on the animal health scene

Mark Matthews retired as a veterinarian earlier this year after 44 years of travelling on dirt roads to the back blocks of Hawke’s Bay and other parts of the Central North Island. Mark grew up on a farm in Poverty Bay but rather than becoming a farmer, he set his sights on being a vet – and a pretty good...

The Value of Building your own Castle

Anecdotally, despite rising construction and land costs, the existing high house prices have made building a house more attractive relative to buying an existing one. This is not surprising given the amount of subdivisions that have become available such as Frimley, Northwood in Hastings, Arataki in Havelock North and Parklands, Guppy Road and Te Awa in Napier being the bigger...

Are you ready for your business to grow?

The goal of most businesses is to grow. Growth is exciting. Growth implies success. More sales, more customers, more staff, more profit. But the reality can be very different. We’ll explore some of the common issues SMEs face during a growth stage; and offer some practical advice for how to work through them. Issues like how to approach business planning,...

Strong Wifi is critical to business success

In business we are using more technology than ever and the internet is now an essential service for our business. With an increase demand on online applications and services having good practical secure Wifi is critical. Business demands technology to be mobile, flexible and not hardwired when possible. Sometimes we forget that we are still using the standard modem that...

Shock and Orr Reserve Bank head prepared to make big calls

Currently, it is very difficult to speak of anything but the low interest rates affecting savers and investors. At the time of writing1, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has taken a breather with its September 2019 announcement and left the Official CashRate(OCR)at 1.00%.After the hefty movement of 0.50% “south” on August 7, this is welcomed in most sectors. The...

New Trust Act – are you prepared?

On 30 July 2019, the Trust Act 2019 received Royal Assent signalling a modernisation of trust legislation that, given the number of trusts in New Zealand, we should all be aware of. The new Act will replace the Trustee Act 1956 and its purpose is to make the law more accessible to both trustees and beneficiaries of trusts. Significantly the...