15 Nov 2017  -  Applications close Friday 24 November for the Rocket Lab Scholarship that was established in 2017 to enable students from the Mahia Peninsula and wider Wairoa District in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, to pursue tertiary study in science, technology or engineering disciplines.

The Rocket Lab Scholarship directly supports the community surrounding Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 and is designed to foster continued excellence and innovation amongst New Zealand’s next generation of science, technology and engineering leaders.

To apply or view the regulations and selection process please click here to download the application form. Complete the form and send to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Friday 24 November 2017

| A Rocket Lab initiative ||  November 15, 2017   |||

14 Nov 2017  -  Freightways Limited (NZSE:FRE), a air freight and logistics company based in New Zealand, saw its share price hover around a small range of NZ$7.43 to NZ$7.93 over the last few weeks. But is this actually reflective of the share value of the small-cap? Or is it currently undervalued, providing us with the opportunity to buy?

Let’s take a look at FRE’s outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if there are any catalysts for a price change.

Check out our latest analysis for Freightways

| A Simply Wall Street release ||  November 14,  2017   |||

14 Nov 2017 - Former Prime Minister Sir John Key spoke to a crowd of 350 at the launch party of professional services firm K3 last Thursday night. he event at Auckland’s Maritime Room celebrated the establishment of K3, a professional services firm which brings together legal, accounting and consulting services under one roof. With more than half of K3’s Legal team fluent in Mandarin and the firm’s extensive links with the Chinese community, Sir John spoke at length about New Zealand’s relationship with China.

“As PM I went to China seven times and everyone knows that I’m a massive China fan. I think the opportunities are enormous, the country is amazing, and the leadership is doing extremely well,” said Sir John, who noted he arrived at the K3 event in an Uber, not a Crown car.

Challenging convention was a subject also covered by K3 Directors Mark Kirkland and Marcus Morrison who spoke about how K3 is looking at business differently, and their desire to make a genuine difference to New Zealand businesses.

“Professional services firms have been run in the same way for generations. But the market has changed extremely rapidly so we think that traditional model needs to change too. Businesses today want a greater depth and breadth of service that is outcome oriented. Our goal is to become New Zealand’s most trusted professional service firm,” said Morrison.

Reflecting on his time as Prime Minister, Sir John said while he has no wish to be PM now, he is extremely grateful for the time he had as leader of New Zealand

“One of the things you can do when you’re Prime Minister is you can shape the country and you really can make a difference. Hopefully [during] the time I was there, we were able, as a government, to economically put New Zealand on a much stronger footing.

“Whatever you think of the world, I reckon most people get up in the morning and they don’t want to be dependent on the state and they do want to look after themselves, they do want to look after their family and they have a lot of personal pride,” said Sir John, to much applause from the audience.

He’d been doing a lot of travelling and had realised New Zealanders tended to overestimate how much other countries knew about “a country of 4.8 million at the bottom of the planet. New Zealand has an amazing reputation but, man, we have to keep fighting for our place in the world.”

The impact of technology was covered by Sir John, who recalled a recent incident at an Under Armour store in China, where he wanted to buy a pair of Jordan Speith golf shoes. At the counter he tried to pay for the shoes using AMEX, Visa, Mastercard and even cash, all of which were rejected by the salesperson.

“So I said, what do you take? And she said, WeChat or Alipay, and that’s it, that was the only thing they accepted. There’s a lot happening in the world that’s really changing. If you look at China, they have some of the most impressive leadership that you’ll find and they’re developing some of the most amazing technology.” He said China’s tech industry was out-stripping Silicon Valley and predicted it would be well ahead of the USA in a decade.

Although Sir John avoided talking specifically about the new coalition government, he did allude to it. “There’s a lot of rhetoric out there that’s anti-migration, anti-investment, anti-trade. But we have to back ourselves to succeed and not be afraid of people coming to New Zealand, don’t be afraid about foreign capital coming in to our companies, don’t be afraid about engaging in free trade deals. If we buy into the Trump rhetoric, we’re going in the wrong direction,” he said.

| A K3 releases  ||  November 14,  2017   |||

Nov 14 2017  -  Human-induced global warming is happening faster than ever and accelerating, according to a new measurement index developed by an international team that includes the Director of Victoria University of Wellington’s New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute, Professor Dave Frame.

The researchers’ real-time Global Warming Index will be updated continuously on the website www.globalwarmingindex.org and provides improved scientific context for temperature stabilisation targets, with the potential to reduce climate policy volatility.

The index and its data have been announced in a paper for the Nature research journal Scientific Reports.

Warming exceeded 1°C above mid-nineteenth-century levels in 2017 and is increasing at a rate that leaves little time to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, say the researchers.

“Global temperatures may be pushed up temporarily by El Niño events or down by volcanic eruptions,” says Dr Karsten Haustein from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, lead author of the paper. “We combine temperature observations with measurements of drivers of climate change to provide an up-to-date estimate of the contribution of human influence to global warming.”

The level of human-induced warming reached 1.02°C above the average for 1850–79 in November 2017 (with a 5-95 percent uncertainty range of 0.89–1.20°C) based on the HadCRUT4 temperature dataset from the UK Met Office, or 1.08°C when estimated using a version of HadCRUT4 that interpolates over poorly sampled regions such as the Arctic.

“This Global Warming Index has been increasing continuously since the nineteenth century, with no pause in recent decades,” says Dr Haustein. “It has risen at a rate of 0.16°C per decade over the past 20 years, and is expected to average 0.96°C above 1850–79 for the decade 2010–2019. Worryingly, it appears to be accelerating, despite the recent slowdown in carbon dioxide emissions, because of trends in other climate pollutants, notably methane.”

Professor Frame says: “A robust, continuously updated index of human-induced warming— the only component of global temperatures we have any control over—is essential to monitor progress toward meeting temperature goals. We hope the Global Warming Index will provide this essential information to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] process.

“Using our index, as well as www.climateclock.net, in conjunction with carbon budget estimates based on current emissions, the remaining time until we cross the anthropogenic warming target of 1.5°C or 2°C can be monitored continuously.”

Paper co-author Professor Myles Allen, also from the University of Oxford, presented the team’s findings to delegates of the UNFCCC conference in Bonn, Germany, on Monday 13 November, at a UN Side Event sponsored by Victoria University of Wellington, in partnership with the Universities of Oxford and Reading and Norway’s CICERO Center for International Climate Research.

The paper’s other co-authors were Professor Piers Forster from the University of Leeds in the UK, Dr Friederike Otto and Dr Daniel Mitchell from the University of Oxford and Professor Damon Matthews from Concordia University Montreal in Canada.

| A Victoria University release   |||  November 14, 2017   |||

14 Nov 2017  - Port Taranaki is proud to be working with the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) to host an open day on the HMNZS Endeavour this Sunday (19 November).  The public open day would undoubtedly be a highlight of the Endeavour’s final visit to her home port, Port Taranaki chief executive Guy Roper said.

“Port Taranaki has had a long association with the Royal New Zealand Navy and Endeavour, and we are proud to be part of these very special celebrations in the lead-up to the ship’s decommissioning in December,” Mr Roper said.

“While it is sad this will be the last time Endeavour will berth at Port Taranaki, it is also a time to celebrate the unique bond our region has with the Navy and this ship in particular.

“We look forward to our continued close association with the Navy through its decision to make Port Taranaki the home of the newest member of its fleet, HMNZS Aotearoa.”

HMNZS Aotearoa, which will be the largest and most high-tech ship the RNZN has operated, will be in service from 2020.

Public tours of the upper decks of the HMNZS Endeavour will take place between 10am and 4pm on Sunday. Shuttles will take groups from Port Taranaki’s ‘East Gate’, on Ocean View Parade adjacent to the New Plymouth Yacht Club and Ngamotu Beach, to the Endeavour and return, the last shuttle will depart from the East Gate at 3:30pm.

Visitors to the ship will need to wear sensible, covered footwear. If needing assistance due to limited mobility, please let staff on the gate know.

Moturoa School will be on-hand with a fundraising sausage sizzle and the RNZN will have souvenirs available, recognising the decommissioning of the vessel.

| A port Taranaki release  ||  November 14,  2017   |||

14 Nov 2017  -  According to Forbes, more than $2.3 billion has been raised in token sales, aka “ICO’s” so far in 2017. As an entrepreneur who has raised more than $300 million of venture capital equity financing in my career, and whose company is holding an ICO in just a few days, I have mixed thoughts about the current ICO bubble. Like many, I’ve been enthralled by the technical elegance and enormous potential of blockchain technologies. And, one cannot help but be fascinated by the amount of capital flowing into cryptocurrencies and ICO’s.

Like many, I’ve also been repulsed by the ICO scams and hype marketing, turned off by the pay-for-play ICO cottage industry, and frightened by the speculative dynamics of cryptocurrencies and token markets.

In a previous post I discussed some of the cringiest moments we’ve encountered during the ICO process.

In this post I present some of my thoughts on the ICO Bubble, implications of the increased ICO volume and noise, and my suggestions for the community to adopt requirements for better ICO’s.

This is a work in progress, intended to spur conversation, and I encourage and welcome everyone’s feedback.

The ICO Bubble in ContextFrom a macro perspective, bubbles serve as an acceleration purpose in technology cycles. The capital markets are currently sizing up cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies much like they did for the emerging Internet companies in the late 1990’s. Back then, hundreds of dot-com companies raised globs of money pre-revenue on big ideas alone and went public long before they should have. Most of those companies didn’t survive, while a handful of the dot-com bubble babies like Amazon and Google went on to dominate. However, any way you slice it, the capital markets’ appetite for speculating on the future value of Internet technologies fueled a massive wave of innovation that fundamentally improved and connected the world. And, many of the ideas that initially failed were recast and reborn years later as successful ventures, once ideas caught up with technical realities and consumer adoption.

Bubbles reflect investor excitement and optimism for game-changing ideas and outsized returns. Bubbles also educate markets. Many consumers first got intrigued by the Internet by following booming Internet stocks, just as many consumers today are first becoming familiar with blockchain and crypto by learning of booming Bitcoin prices.

Blockchain today is like 1993 internet — we’re still at the early stage of building protocols and middleware — albeit with 1999 bubble hype. The current cycle is more compressed than the 1993–2000 dot-com cycle because blockchain technology is based on immediately recognizable economic value, whereas Internet companies were valued based on potential future profits and stock prices. The dot-com bubble was fueled by investor enthusiasm to get into those zero-to-one projects, much as the crytpo bubble is today.

Continue here to read the full article by Board Member OpenST Foundation. Founder and CEO of Simple Token. Founder & CEO of Pepo.Board Member OpenST Foundation. Founder and CEO of Simple Token. Founder & CEO of Pepo.  ||  November 14,  2017   |||

14 Nov 2017  -  The mother of all produce sanitisation machines has arrived in Australia, fresh off the ship from Germany, as the country takes its food safety technology to the next level. Dubbed ‘The Food Safety Supercharger’, the custom-made 250-kilogram test-unit creates a stream of ‘supercharged air’ by applying an electric current to normal air. Using this disruptive technology, it has the capacity to kill microbial pathogens on the surface of fresh produce and nuts, without leaving any chemical residues.

Housed at a NSW Department of Primary Industries laboratory, this world-first machine aims to eliminate microbial contaminants such as Salmonella, Listeria and E.coli which cause foodborne illness outbreaks. Other spoilage-causing moulds can also be suppressed, offering a longer shelf-life and reduced food waste.

Hort Innovation fund manager Tim Archibald said the technology – which is part of a $5M jointly-funded project with the NSW Department of Primary Industries – has never been commercially used on food.

“The Food Safety Supercharger is here, and Australia is on track to introduce some of the most sophisticated sanitation technology in the world,” Mr Archibald said. “While there are good post-harvest practices already in place in Australia, when isolated contamination incidents occur, farmers are devastated.”

“This supercharged air technology has the exciting potential to limit product recalls, minimise trade disruptions and ensure consumers are confident about the produce they are buying. It also offers an environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional food sanitisers.”

Lead researcher, Dr Sukhvinder Pal Singh, explained that supercharged air is plasma, which is the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas.

“Natural plasma in the universe, such as the sun’s surface, has a temperature of thousands of degrees Celsius, while human-made, non-thermal plasma is only 30 to 40 degrees. That is why the technology can also be referred to as ‘cold plasma’,” he said.

Dr Singh presented the bold idea of applying cold plasma technology to fresh produce and nuts to Hort Innovation about a year ago.

“It was a transformative idea that presented a high reward for the horticulture industry if it worked,” he said. “Non-food sectors such as automotive, aerospace, textile, polymer, electronics and biomedical were already using the technology – particularly overseas, but it had never been applied to fresh produce.

“Once support was secured from Hort Innovation, which encourages disruptive technology, our team was able to start the research with the first-generation plasma unit. We then engaged a world-leading machine manufacturer in Germany to create a custom unit.”

Dr Singh said through their early testing, his team has determined that it is possible to kill bacteria and moulds in a short treatment time but there is a still a lot of research to come. He said now the latest generation of the machine is in the lab, the efficiency at which researchers can decontaminate produce is significantly higher than with their previous test unit, which was one-fifth the size.

He said after determining which fruit, vegetables and nuts are responsive to the treatment, the research team needs to ensure the killing of microbial pathogens does not compromise the quality and nutritional value of food.

“Ultimately, we would like to see this technology work and provide a pathway to commercialisation and for growers and packers to adopt it. Time will tell, but the early signs of this research are certainly promising.”

The research is due for completion in 2021. See a video of the technology in action.

| A Hort Innovation release  ||  November 14,  2017   |||

14 Nov 2017  -  Michael Molitch-Hou posted on engineering.com an article on HP’s Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) 3D printing technology.  He writes that this technologythat  has been one of the most exciting to watch, not just in terms of what it is capable of now, but what it portends for the future— a future that includes embedded electronics, augmented reality, ceramics and even metal.  Laying out the road to that future, HP announced both the release of a new MJF printer, ahead of formnext, and, this past October, plans to embark on metal additive manufacturing (AM). Along with the new Jet Fusion 3D 4210 system, HP has also announced, as a part of its Open Materials Platform, an expanded materials portfolio and additional partners.

Jet Fusion 3D 4210

The newest MJF system, the Jet Fusion 3D 4210, is an upgrade to one of its flagship machines, the Jet Fusion 3D 4200. The 4200 was already an improvement upon the other flagship system, the 3200, in that it printed and cooled faster, and had lower material costs for serial production.

The 4210 takes these improvements further and, according to HP, “rais[es] the ‘break-even point’ for large-scale 3D manufacturing to up to 110,000 parts.” This means that producing up to 110,000 items on the system matches the costs of traditional mass manufacturing methods. Based on the company’s internal testing, parts can be mass produced at 65 percent of the cost of other AM technologies, such as fused deposition modeling and selective laser sintering (SLS).

Ramon Pastor, general manager of Multi Jet Fusion for HP’s 3D printing business, put this point in context, “HP’s Jet Fusion 3D systems have now reached a technological and economic inflection point that combines the speed, quality and scalability needed to accelerate manufacturing’s digital industrial revolution.”

The increased productivity is the result of hardware and firmware upgrades made to the existing Jet Fusion systems, which make it possible to perform continuous operation. This includes a new processing station for handling higher material volumes. Preorders for the machine, including upgrades for existing Jet Fusion customers, are available now.

New Materials

HP has a unique approach to its materials for MJF, allowing partners to develop proprietary materials on MJF systems to be sold through HP’s distribution network. As a part of the Open Materials Platform, it’s also possible to work with what the company dubs a Material Development Kit (MDK), which gives customers access to specific parts of the MJF process at various stages of printing, beginning with powder distribution.

Up to now, the materials were somewhat limited to a couple of varieties of black nylon powder. This material set has expanded with the latest news from HP, adding several materials that bring MJF closer in line with the technology’s number one competitor, SLS.

These materials include:

• HP 3D High Reusability PA 11: This form of nylon is meant for low-cost, functional parts with impact resistance and ductility, like insoles, snap fits and living hinges.
• HP 3D High Reusability PA 12 Glass Beads: This form of nylon brings added dimensional stability and repeatability, making it useful for parts that require stiffness, such as enclosures, molds and tooling.
• HP 3D High Reusability Polypropylene: This durable material maintains greater flexibility and chemical resistance than the others and is ideal for lightweight and watertight applications.

HP’s materials partners previously included Arkema, BASF, Evonik, Henkel, Lehmann & Voss, and Sinopec Yanshan Petrochemical Company. Along with news of the above materials, HP also added two more partners. Dressler Group will be giving the aforementioned chemical companies access to its toll grinding manufacturing capabilities to enable quicker material development. Berkshire Hathaway’s Lubrizol, a chemical company with thermoplastic polyurethane expertise, has also been added to the group and will be developing materials for final part production with MJF.

According to HP, over 50 chemical companies are “actively engaged” in the Open Materials Platform. The latest are Dow Chemical and DSM, who have purchased the MDK to develop powders for MJF. Evonik and Henkel have also purchased Jet Fusion printers themselves to develop powders for the platform.

HP Aims for Metal AM

At the HP Securities Analyst Meeting 2017 in Palo Alto in October, the company also announced that it was planning to enter the metal AM market, something I’d hypothesized since the launch of MJF at RAPID 2016.

President of 3D Printing at HP, Stephen Nigro, relayed at the event, “We have developed a novel 3D metal approach that is built to run a combination of high quality and improved economics [for] 3D-printed metals. Today’s 3D metal industry is focused primarily on specialized, high value, expensive applications. Our invention will transform the 3D metal into a more mainstream, high-volume production.”

The MJF platform had already been modified so that it could produce ceramic components, which likely involves binding the ceramic powder together before this completed green part is sintered in an oven. Metal, then, would require a similar approach, with the ceramic swapped out for metal.

This Metal Injection Molding-style technique has already been implemented with Desktop Metal’s technology, possibly putting the startup in direct competition with HP. We’ll know more next year when HP will officially announce the platform and its business plan for metal AM.

Also at the event, Nigro said that HP will be releasing its full-color MJF platform next year. This will give MJF a serious leg up on SLS, which requires either dying printed parts or printing in monocolor plastics. Combined with the productivity of MJF, full-color 3D printing will make it possible for the technology to compete with injection molding even further.

“MJF will be the one and only 3D printing technology in the industry that can make mechanical and robust functional full-color parts,” Nigro explained.“We plan to combine this color capability with a new, lower price position. The lower price position will open up new markets to HP, making it easier for designers and creators to access the technology. Being able to prototype with the same technology as full-scale production, which will change the end-to-end design process and accelerate the adoption of 3D printing.”

In an industry filled with hype, I’m reluctant to say that both of these announcements may have a profound impact on how the 3D printing industry evolves and may shake up the $12 trillion manufacturing industry, as HP claims it will.

| An engineering.com release  ||  November 13,  2017   |||

13 Nov 2017  -  After a few fraught days, the TPP was given new life. However, the struggles to get the deal across the line and other issues at the Apec summit raise questions about obstacles to multilateral trade and what that means for New Zealand, as Sam Sachdeva reports.  The ideological battle for the future of Asia-Pacific trade played out on the big screen at Da Nang.

Of course, there was the stuttering, stumbling, but ultimately successful (or near enough) negotiations to reach agreement on the TPP (now known as the CPTPP - the Comprehensive and Progressive agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership).

While the New Zealand team was cautiously hailing the outcome, other events at the Apec summit may have given them cause for concern when it comes to multilateralism.

In his speech to the Apec CEO’s Summit, US President Donald Trump railled against what he saw as unfair trading arrangements, saying the US had “not been treated fairly” by the WTO and other countries had not reciprocated the favours extended by his country.

While the US was open to bilateral agreements with any Asia-Pacific country, he made no bones about its approach to multilateralism.

“What we will no longer do is enter into large agreements that tie our hands, surrender our sovereignty, and make meaningful enforcement practically impossible.”

Worryingly, there are some concerns about whether Trump wants to kill the WTO: an article in the New York Times suggested American negotiators had warned their Mexican and Canadian counterparts that they could not expect their trade to “simply snap back to WTO rules” if the US leaves NAFTA.

Continue here to read the full Newsroom article by Sam Sachdeva ||  November 13 2017   |||

10 Nov 2017  -  International port logistics company ISO Limited has been selected as the preferred operator for Kawerau's planned container terminal. This selection is a vital step towards the container terminal's completion. Kawerau District Council economic and community development manager Glenn Sutton said the decision was not easy.

"It was an extremely close choice between ISO and the other candidate, C3, as both companies were of high calibre and would have easily met the requirements for the role.

"ISO has high values and an emphasis on community involvement and development that Industrial Symbiosis Kawerau believes will complement and benefit the district."

ISO Limited is an international port logistics company, providing stevedoring, marshalling, warehousing, container-packing, IT and total supply chain solutions to exporters and importers throughout New Zealand, Australia and America.

Its New Zealand operations include Marsden Point, Auckland, Tauranga, Kaingaroa, Murupara, New Plymouth, Gisborne, Napier, Wellington, Lyttelton, Bluff, Nelson and Timaru.

"Consequently, the company brings a wealth of experience and skills to the operation of the Kawerau container terminal and is well supported by its parent company, QUBE," Sutton said.

Industrial Symbiosis Kawerau initiated the container terminal concept in 2012.

"Once completed, the terminal will provide a cost-effective logistics system for Eastern Bay of Plenty value-added exporters to transport their products to port."

Toi-EDA general manager Francis Pauwels said the terminal would support the Eastern Bay for current and predicted growth.

"This project is positive for the entire Bay of Plenty as business and industry work together to better the region.

"The overarching strategy is to achieve cost-effective and efficient logistics solutions for current businesses to grow, and to attract new businesses into the region.

"Moving freight is a key component of that, but also extends to UFB coverage, airport links, wharf facilities and safe roading networks.

"The terminal site is owned by the Putauaki Trust and represents fantastic partnerships between Eastern Bay businesses and communities."

The next step in the project will see Industrial Symbiosis Kawerau and involved partners working with ISO on the terminal's design.

| An ISO release  ||  November 10,  2017   |||