Category: Latest News

Steam is rising from the boilers again at Pan Pac after a 16 month clean up at a cost of over $300 million. Fair to say it wasn’t the best way to celebrate 50 years of business. Cyclone Gabrielle struck with all its fury submerging the Whirinaki site with over 2 metres in water and more than 750,000m3 of silt....

Two local businesses with strong Māori heritage are backing Te Matau a Māui Hawke’s Bay Māori rugby team as it prepares to challenge Te Upoko o Te Ika Wellington Māori Wellington for the Sir Eruera Tihema Tirakatene Shield, the Ranfurly Shield of Māori rugby. Hastings based Geotech engineering firm RDCL and civil infrastructure firm Tūpore Infrastructure have been confirmed as lead...

One year on from an initial analysis of the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle, a new report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has found the Hawke's Bay horticultural sector needs at least $410 million in additional funding to recover to its pre-cyclone state by 2030.   BCG’s report, Hawke’s Bay Horticultural Sector: Economic recovery update: a year after Cyclone Gabrielle, has found...

Divine table grapes that herald the start of a brand new industry in Hawke’s Bay have been coming off vines in Maraekakaho. It is the first harvest of Greencollar, an innovative Japanese company determined to expand the currently tiny table grape industry in New Zealand. Greencollar featured in The Profit in early 2023. The harvest follows a complex and intricate...

Rockit Global Limited Chairman John Loughlin has announced that Chief Executive Officer, Mark O’Donnell has decided to retire from 31 March 2025. An international search will commence to find a replacement. The timing allows for the search and good handover to a successor, to be completed around the 2025 harvest and the early sales season for that crop. Mark O’Donnell...

Local lines company Unison Networks is partnering with the Faraday Museum of Technology this month to celebrate 100 years of powering communities. Founded on 19 June 1924 as the Hawke’s Bay Electric Power Board, Unison has grown from a small lines company in Hawke’s Bay to a global group of specialist electricity companies. To celebrate this milestone, Napier’s Faraday Museum...

Award winning New Zealand tech innovator, Fingermark, has secured a cornerstone investment from global water, hygiene and infection prevention leader, Ecolab. This investment includes a multimillion dollar capital injection that will support Fingermark’s rapidly rising global growth trajectory. Luke Irving, Founder and Chief Executive of Fingermark, hailed the deal as transformative. “This is a true collaboration that will help both...

Housing is one of the biggest discussion topics in Hawke’s Bay. Housing supply, urban intensification, expansion on to primary productive land, resource and building consent timelines and success, fast tracking government consents, 30 year land supply, houses vs building communities are usual parts of the conversation by planners, councils, developers, builders and government agencies. In 2019 the region was facing...