The Profit - Inspiring Business in Hawke's Bay

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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...

Property investors predict positive investment conditions

Commercial and industrial property investors see positive investment conditions over the next 12 months in Napier and Hastings, according to the latest Colliers International commercial property investor confidence survey. A net positive (optimists minus pessimists) 25 percent of respondents expect investment conditions to improve over the next 12 months, which was up slightly from the previous 2Q 2019 survey. The...

Policy set to protect productive land

In April 2018, MfE and Stats NZ published the Our land 2018 report, which is a comprehensive assessment of how human activity is affecting the state of New Zealand’s land to date. The report identified two main pressures facing highly productive land on the edge of towns and cities: expansion of urban areas, and the accompanying loss of productive land;...

Powering up Arataki

Thanks to an abundance of Hawke’s Bay sunlight, Arataki will halve its annual power bill through a new solar power installation at its production plant in Havelock North. Managers Pam and Rhys Flack say the move to solar energy is another important step in Arataki’s commitment towards improving its environmental footprint. “We’re also making processing changes to favour daytime power...