Waste Management NZ is currently trialling their first electric truck for wheelie bin waste collections, which will start work on New Zealand streets from October this year.

Christchurch will be the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to put a 100% electric residential waste collection truck into service.

More electric trucks will arrive into Waste Management’s fleet in other cities around New Zealand towards the end of 2017.

Waste Management announced its move towards a fleet of electric vehicles in September last year as part of its Sustainability Commitment.

Waste Management NZ’s first electric truck.

The company has introduced more than 20 electric cars within its light fleet. It also launched an electric box body truck, which collects food waste from Countdown supermarkets across Auckland, earlier this year. This new truck will be the first electric truck which is designed and dedicated to collecting residential wheelie bins from the kerbside.

Tom Nickels, Waste Management Managing Director, says the new truck is further evidence of the company’s continued shift to EVs.

“With a large fleet of trucks and cars on the road we believe we can help safeguard our environment for future generations through the adoption of electric vehicle technology. I am delighted we’re bringing this strategy to life by rolling out electric trucks across New Zealand.”

Other logistics operators, such as Infratil NZ, have been trialling electric vehicle technologies. Their business NZ bus is testing the Chinese made BYD fully electric vehicle, in a bid to accelerate the transition to electric-powered public transport in New Zealand.

| A VINZ release  ||  September 13,  2017   |||

FreshPlaza | The link between weather and the price of vegetables has become all too apparent for shoppers in recent months. Grocery prices across New Zealand skyrocketed after back-to-back storms wiped out entire crops.

In our household, we swapped kumara for potatoes, after prices nudged $9/kg. Kumara was just $3.12/kg in July 2016, according to Statistics New Zealand.

It's been a terrible growing season for vegetable producers. This year's kumara crop was just one of the casualties. Planting was delayed by unfavourable weather conditions. The seedlings then struggled through a dry summer.

The country's commercial crop is grown in Dargaville and Ruawai in Northland. Record-breaking rain drenched the region just before the harvest was due to start. Mechanical harvesters couldn't get onto the waterlogged paddocks.

I've seen photos of workers trudging through mud, trying to salvage what they could of the crop.

Further south, the fertile dark brown soils of Pukekohe are used to grow everything from onions, to lettuces, squash and broccoli. Vegetables are a big earner for the region.

But Pukekohe wasn't spared when ex Tropical Cyclone Debbie pounded parts of the country. Figures from NIWA show on April 4, Pukekohe received 84mm of rain. It was one of numerous areas to experience their wettest April day on record.

The deluge wiped out entire crops of green vegetablesThe storms triggered supply shortages. It was reported that some supermarkets in the North Island were left with empty shelves. Lettuce hit $10.56 a kilogram in May, up from $4.23 a year earlier, according to Statistics New Zealand.

Vegetable growers did an excellent job explaining the flow-on effects of miserable weather. Hopefully it meant shoppers pushing trolleys around the fruit and vegetable section of supermarkets at least knew why prices had spiked.

That's why I was surprised to see an Auckland restaurant owner in the media complaining about the hike in vegetable prices. Tobias Roebuck-Ward labelled the high prices "ridiculous" and "absurd". His Ponsonby restaurant had reportedly spent 42 per cent of its weekly food sales in early June on produce. Typically, that figure was between 30 and 35 per cent.

Roebuck-Ward said the rise in prices was difficult for his trendy eatery because it had a no freezer philosophy and bought fresh produce daily. We've had breakfast at his restaurant. It was amazing. But his comments left me feeling like he was out of touch with the daily challenges faced by growers.

I'd hate to think what we would have done if we'd had to rely solely on our vege patch last summer. The tomato crop was a failure. The capsicums grew to the size of a golf ball, then stalled. The perpetual spinach, snow peas and butter beans were the only things that thrived. In fact, the snow pea crop was probably a record one.

Other Taranaki green thumbs were in a similar predicament. Slavko Nikolovski's prized vegetable plot was a mass of rotted fruit and leaves when Stuff spoke to him in mid-April. It was usually brimming with ripe capsicums, verdant sweetcorn and dark juicy grapes.

The fact that some consumers are still grumbling about the record-high cost of vegetables highlights the disconnect between shoppers and reality. If you've ever tried growing broccoli, cauliflower and kumara in your backyard, you'll know they take months to grow - not days. Those storms may seem like a lifetime ago, but it's only been a few months. That's why the flow-on effects are still being felt at the checkout.

In many cases, entire rotting crops had to be replanted. That couldn't happen until sodden soils had dried out enough for tractors to get on them.

I spent a number of years working as a reporter in Orange, which is about four hours inland from Sydney. At the time, the region was gripped by a prolonged drought. Rain would bring hope to weary sheep and cattle farmers, but it could often be a curse for orchardists. A hail storm at Christmas would split cherries, wiping millions from the crop's value. That's why it's important people always try to understand the connection between the weather and their food.

| A FreshPlaza release ||  September 12,  2017   |||

FreshPlaza | A tech company that helps farmers improve crop yields will list on the Australian Securities Exchange today.

CropLogic has raised the $8 million it sought in an IPO, and said it was even offered $1 million on top of that during the offer period. Forty million ordinary shares will be issued at 20 cents each, and the business will have a market cap of $25 million.

The New Zealand “internet of things” agriculture tech company, established in 2010, uses on-field sensors connected via wireless and satellite channels to collect data such as soil moisture and temperature, and rainfall, alongside other information to give farmers a predictive analysis of their efforts.

CropLogic’s current client base is predominantly potato farmers in the Pacific northwest region of the USA after the startup’s June acquisition of US agronomy services provider Professional Ag Services Inc.

The first seven years have been a hard slog financially, with the prospectus showing just $124,906 in revenue and $1.34 million net loss for the year ending March 2017 and similar numbers seen the previous year.

The $8 million raised in the IPO – which added to $3 million already secured in the past 12 months — would be used for business growth, market development, research and to “provide a healthy level of working capital”, according to CropLogic managing director Jamie Cairns.

| A FreshPlaza release  ||  September 12,  2017   |||

Tattoos and piercings are emblems of tribal allegiances

The re-emergence of the North-South divide in the United States supplies further evidence of the way in which the English-speaking zone is being overtaken by tribalism.

This fresh evidence of tribal divergence follows on the heels of the determination of the previous United States presidential dynasties to fight their supplanter, President Donald Trump.

The continuing politicking of the Clinton, Bush and Obama families campaigning seamlessly against the victorious candidate is classic tribal activity in that it cuts across constitutional political transitional processes, writes our roving reporter National Press Club president Peter Isaac.

The advent too of the presidency as a presidential family collective is still further evidence of this tribal drift.

The magnetic pull of tribal resurgence though is most evident now in the United Kingdom..

There the continuing Scottish secession agitation seeking to break away from England remains the most obvious example in the English-speaking zone.

The UK tribal factor became more evident now that any remaining economic underpinning of this breakaway movement has evaporated with Scotland’s bankrupt banks now being controlled from London.

The retribalizing of the English-speaking zone is taking place through stealth, and very largely because the institutions that exist to monitor such a development remaining mute about it.

University socio-political faculties deliberately choose to ignore this increasingly manifest development for fear of upsetting politicians and thus their own funding..

Universities refuse to see such every day and human evidence of tribalisation as the tattooing and other examples of self-adornment and self-mutilation of the entire socio-economic spectrum from show-biz types (pictured) to the industrial and administrative middle class.

This practice once confined to practitioners of virile callings, notably sailors, is now exploding into the elites, notably females whose tattoos are now so much bolder than those once displayed by sea farers, and those in other such danger-prone occupations..

Only Australia according to a covert European evaluation of tribally-inspired fractionalisaton possesses the equivalent of the United States 19th century melting pot, and was thus free of the threat of this resurgence.

New Zealand in contrast has deliberately nurtured tribalism through its parliamentary electoral system, a state of affairs now being actively challenged by the New Zealand First Party and also by Dr Don Brash’s Hobson’s Pledge movement

Official action within New Zealand to curb its tribally-based gangs is deliberately muted in order to appease an elitist political class.

This views and even encourages these anti-social collectives replete with their tribal markings and paraphernalia as evidence of repression inflicted on adherents during and after the imperial era, and thus living emblems of a collective guilt.

Canada is another example.

The largest English-speaking nation geographically must appease its French-speaking minority regions, and must do so with increasing emphasis and intensity.

Tribalisation in this English-speaking zone is now taking the form of a pulling away from a concerted national collective direction and instead reverting to an atavistic romantic blend centred on a notion of an oppression-stoked grandeur of times past.

Another element pointing to the institutionalised pandering to tribalism in the English –speaking zone remains the Westminster Green Paper on broadcasting and its stated need for mass access i.e. customisation to cater to these sectorised and evolving tribal patterns.

In other words Whitehall is accommodating and acknowledging this accelerating tribalisation drift and is accordingly setting about installing the policies needed to appease it.

Universities and other publicly-funded institutions indicate a deliberate and harmonised complicity in ignoring in spite of the evidence this gathering tribal momentum

Indeed, academic institutions supposed to measure the growth of the practical expression of the tribal instinct are often filled with individuals themselves emblematically part of it.

These are their operatives consciously or unconsciously succumbing to the resurgent tribal pull in the form of neck and sleeve arm tattoos and expandable ear lobe insertion devices among the other physical adornments associated with traditional tribal allegiances.

| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  ||  Wednesday 13 September 2017   |||

New studies find microplastics in salt from the US, Europe and China, adding to evidence that plastic pollution is pervasive in the environment

Sea salt around the world has been contaminated by plastic pollution, adding to experts’ fears that microplastics are becoming ubiquitous in the environment and finding their way into the food chain via the salt in our diets.

Following this week’s revelations in the Guardian about levels of plastic contamination in tap water, new studies have shown that tiny particles have been found in sea salt in the UK, France and Spain, as well as China and now the US.

Researchers believe the majority of the contamination comes from microfibres and single-use plastics such as water bottles, items that comprise the majority of plastic waste. Up to 12.7m tonnes of plastic enters the world’s oceans every year, equivalent to dumping one garbage truck of plastic per minute into the world’s oceans, according to the United Nations.

“Not only are plastics pervasive in our society in terms of daily use, but they are pervasive in the environment,” said Sherri Mason, a professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, who led the latest research into plastic contamination in salt. Plastics are “ubiquitous, in the air, water, the seafood we eat, the beer we drink, the salt we use – plastics are just everywhere”.

Continue here to read the full article and supporting material . . .

| A TheGuardian release  ||  September 8,  2017   |||

The acquisition of a computer vision startup speeds the company’s goal of helping farmers grow enough food for an exploding global population.

On a block in San Francisco’s SoMa district, near LinkedIn’s headquarters and dozens of startups, a 180-year-old company best-known for making tractors has a gleaming new Silicon Valley office. But inside, instead of building the latest app, John Deere is focused on how to use artificial intelligence to make farming equipment that can meet modern sustainability and food production challenges.

John Deere Labs, which opened its doors in the spring, made its first major deal on September 6. The company spent $305 million to acquire Blue River Technology, a startup with computer vision and machine learning technology that can identify weeds–making it possible to spray herbicides only where they’re needed. The technology reduces chemical use by about 95%, while also improving yield.

“What Blue River Technology allows us to do is move to the plant level, and start managing at that plant level.” [Photo: courtesy Deere & Company]It’s one step in John Deere’s embrace of “precision agriculture,” the use of technology to target crops and soil for optimum productivity and health. The manufacturer began incorporating aspects of precision agriculture more than two decades ago, building self-driving technology into tractors long before it started showing up in cars. But advances in AI mean that farm equipment can change more significantly now.

“What Blue River Technology allows us to do is move to the plant level, and start managing at that plant level,” says Alex Purdy, director of John Deere Labs. “That’s going to have transformative power in agriculture both in terms of yield but also in terms of cost for growers.”

Continue to read the full article here . . .

| A Fastcompany release  || September 12,  2017   |||

High-strength 50mm diameter reinforcing steel bars in production at Pacific Steel, Ōtāhuhu.

Steel reinforcing bars made in Auckland for the City Rail Link project are the first of their kind to be manufactured in New Zealand.

The steel bars will help hold up the historic Chief Post Office when the rail tunnels are constructed beneath it and keep water out of excavation carried out below sea level.Difficult to source from overseas

Products like this are usually sourced from overseas, but this proved difficult for the CRL because offshore manufacturers could provide it only in quantities much greater than required.

CRL contractors Downer Soletanche Bachy liaised with New Zealand based suppliers over the possibility of manufacturing the bars locally, and Ōtāhuhu-based Pacific Steel took up the challenge.

Pacific Steel is New Zealand’s only reinforcing steel manufacturer. After successful trials, it has been engaged to make the bars, using local materials provided by New Zealand Steel in Glenbrook.Project more efficient thanks to NZ industry

Project Director Chris Meale said that, thanks to Pacific Steel coming to the party, the project has become much more efficient.

"It's great that our contractor has been able to work with a local business for mutual benefit and that in doing so we have created a first for the local steel industry," he said.

| An ourAuckland release  || September 12,  2017   |||

Telematics provider Teletrac Navman has announced it has reached the 100,000-asset milestone across its New Zealand and Australian customers.

It recently installed its GPS fleet tracking technology in the Safety MAN Road Safety Truck, an initiative led by the NZ Trucking Association.

“We work with thousands of companies across Aotearoa, from grassroots family businesses to large multinational operators in transport, construction and professional services, and we are thrilled to reach this milestone,” said Ian Daniel, Vice President and Managing Director Asia Pacific, Teletrac Navman.

“We track everything from powerful freight trucks to SPCA Auckland’s rescue vans, and nippy Domino’s Pizza delivery vehicles to tradies’ tool-laden utes. Our heritage is rooted in New Zealand and we proudly partner with our Kiwi customers to leverage technology to increase productivity and profitability of their businesses.”

The global fleet and asset management solutions provider's beginnings trace back to Auckland in 1986, with vehicles in New Zealand and Australia representing around one fifth of the 550,000 vehicles and assets that Teletrac Navman tracks and manages worldwide.

|  A PrimeMover release  ||  September 12,  2017   |||

Any vendor looking to poach the clients of a competitor is wasting its time, writes Martin Olsen for iStart …

The mid-market ERP space is fascinating right now. Oracle (an enterprise player) just bought NetSuite for $9.3 billion. Sage (which likes to buy and rename software) just purchased Intacct for $850 million. Microsoft (dominates mid-market ERP on-premise software) spent hundreds of millions building Dynamics 365 Financials.

Mid-market companies are often defined as companies that have between 50 and 1000 employees, or sometimes as those with revenues between US$100 million and $3 billion. This is a very large market segment with well over 200,000 USA-based businesses in that category alone. If you add in the top-end of the small market down to companies turning over $50 million, the market gets wildly larger.

This context is necessary to appreciate the size of the mid-market that ERP vendors are addressing. These companies have complex business processes and compliance requirements requiring the purchase of software solutions to manage and keep control of the business.

Continue here to read the full article ||  September 12,  2017

A move has begun to develop a tropical fruits demonstration farm in the Gisborne district with the initial focus on the potential for commercial banana production.

Northland-grown bananas have been at markets in Northland for some time and the rising interest in their production led to the formation of the Tropical Fruit Growers of New Zealand (TFGNZ) group.

That group has begun to explore and experiment with tropical fruit production in Northland with bananas as their first focus.

The group has offered their expertise to the Te Nahu whanau Tai Pukenga Trust based in Papatu Road at Manutuke.

“Looking for diversification, the trust has researched the establishment of a tropical fruits demonstration farm on that land,” said trust programme manager Trevor Mills.

Mr Mills said growing bananas on a commercial basis provided a better shorter-term commercial return than other horticulture crops like citrus and grapes.

“The Northland banana growers are getting $5 a kilo for their fruit. They have sweetness and taste that imported bananas cannot provide. The total value of imported bananas consumed in New Zealand is now over $150 million a year.

“As a result of their research, the TFGNZ group reports a possible return of $20,000-$30,000 a hectare after about a 30-month period from planting to harvesting.”

| A FreshPlaza.com release  ||  September 12,  2017   |||