The Power Farming Euro Tour saw 63 New Zealand farmers, contractors and dealers hit Italy and Germany to see the latest tractor technologies from the SDF Group including production of the series 6, 7 and 9 Deutz Fahr. The Power Farming Euro Tour saw 63 New Zealand farmers, contractors and dealers hit Italy and Germany to see the latest tractor technologies from the SDF Group including production of the series 6, 7 and 9 Deutz Fahr.

While the All Blacks were well into planning their end-of-year tour, another group of Kiwis headed to the northern hemisphere in the middle of July during the European summer.

The Power Farming Euro Tour saw 63 New Zealand farmers, contractors and dealers hit Italy and Germany to see the latest tractor technologies from the SDF Group, which recently commissioned the most modern tractor factory in the world.

First stop was at the SDF headquarters in Treviglio, east of Milan in northern Italy.

This is the home of Deutz Fahr tractors up to 130hp and the capable and versatile Series 5 tractors. Guests could take in the heritage of a business that saw the Cassani brothers build their first diesel tractor in 1927, and the SAME DA, the world’s first 4WD tractor, launched in 1952.

On the production lines an upgrade is underway to produce automated guided vehicles (AGV) that carry the emerging tractors around the site and allow the factory to build up to 100 tractors each day.

Following a trip to a local dairy farm, which supplemented milk production with a large biogas plant, the party headed over the Alps to Munich and on to Lauingen, the home of Deutz Fahr.

Said to be the fastest growing brand in Europe, Deutz Fahr has recently commissioned a state-of-the art tractor assembly plant aptly named Deutz Fahr Land. In a building of 42,000sq.m on a site of 160,000sq.m and built at a cost of NZ$145 million, the mission is to build tractors right first time (RTF). A completed tractor leaves the production line every 12 minutes; the factory is said to be capable of producing up to 6000 units per annum on a one-shift basis.

Continue to read the full article here   | A Rural News release  ||  August 28, 2017   |||

The export value of New Zealand wine has reached a record high according to the 2017 Annual Report of New Zealand Winegrowers. Now valued at $1.66 billion, up 6% in June year end 2017, wine now stands as New Zealand’s fifth largest goods export.

Over the past two decades the wine industry has achieved average annual export growth of 17% a year states the Report. “With diversified markets and a strong upward trajectory, the industry is in good shape to achieve $2 billion of exports by 2020” said Steve Green, Chair of New Zealand Winegrowers.

According to the Report exports to the USA have lead the strong growth, passing $500 million for the first time (up 12%). New Zealand wine became the third most valuable wine import into the USA, behind only France and Italy.

Mr Green highlighted that in order to achieve continuing value growth, it is critical for the industry to maintain focus on protecting and enhancing its reputation as a distinctive, quality product. “Our premium reputation remains the greatest collective asset for New Zealand wine, and underlies the high average price our wine commands in global trade”.

Improved protection of New Zealand’s regional identities through the Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Act, and initiatives such as the launch of the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand Continuous Improvement extension programme will help enhance the world-class reputation of New Zealand wine as a premium and sustainable product, said Mr Green.

The 2017 Annual Report can  be accessed here:  https://www.nzwine.com/en/news-media/statistics-reports/new-zealand-winegrowers-annual-report/

| An NZWinegrowers release  ||  August 28,  2017   |||

The apple season will still be a bumper despite T&G Global's lower first-half-year profit forecast, says New Zealand Apples and Pears chief executive Alan Pollard and reported by FreshPlaza.

In a NZX announcement T&G Global reported a 49 per cent decrease in first-half-year profit, with poor weather contributing to harvest timing, quality, volume and margin.

"Inclement weather also affected third-party growing partners in New Zealand and internationally, leading to an overall decrease in the volume of fruit available," T&G Global said.

Profitability was also affected by the northern hemisphere where fruit was available for a longer period, delaying the switch to southern produce.

"These issues led to operating profit for the pipfruit division decreasing by $8 million from the same period last year."

Mr Pollard said that, for the whole season, it looked like it would be a similar result to last year nationwide.

"Last year was a record year, so if we do the same we equal our record - you can't complain about that," he said.

| A Fresh Plaza release |  August 25,  2017   |||

Air New Zealand is poised to launch its first ever global brand campaign showing international travellers why the airline is A Better Way to Fly to New Zealand.

The campaign will kick off in the US on Thursday night (Friday afternoon NZT) with a star-studded event in Los Angeles then roll out progressively across the UK, Europe, Asia and South America in coming months.

It’s set to feature New Zealand’s own Sam Neill (Hunt for the Wilderpeople; Jurassic Park) as the voice of CGI character Pete, a kiwi who wants to see the world but is hampered by his inability to fly. Pete takes viewers along on his journey to show travellers the Air New Zealand inflight experience.

The campaign follows the success of a similar marketing approach launched in Australia last year featuring a CGI goose named Dave who has been convincing Australians that Air New Zealand offers a better way to fly long-haul to North and South America.

Air New Zealand General Manager of Global Brand and Content Marketing Jodi Williams says, “This first phase of the campaign is targeted at North American travellers interested in visiting New Zealand - and potentially Australia - as well as those travelling between LA and London. It uses Pete the kiwi to win potential customers over with our award-winning product and service.

“In the past year alone there’s been a 26 percent increase* in the number of visitors arriving in New Zealand from the US, but more importantly research shows there are still around 27 million** Americans interested in holidaying in New Zealand, demonstrating the huge potential of this market.

“We’ve conducted detailed consumer research all over the world to gain greater insight into travellers’ habits and their understanding of our products and services. Interestingly, we found that perception of distance is one of the greatest barriers to travel to New Zealand with some consumers believing we’re 20 hours or more flight time away. By showcasing our direct services and inflight products in an innovative and creative way, we hope to bust those myths and get more international visitors to commit to travelling on Air New Zealand.”

Video content of the campaign, including the hero video and Sam Neill discussing his latest starring role, along with high resolution images for A Better Way to Fly can be downloaded here

| An Air New Zealand release  ||  August 24, 2017   |||

Whittaker's, a premium brand of chocolate in the Land of the Long White Cloud has established a foothold in the Fijian market thanks to an exclusive distribution deal with the Motibhai Group.

Whittaker's head of international markets Matt Whittaker who visited the country this week on a market-familiarisation trip, said he was very impressed with the response from Fijian customers.

"We're delighted to now have this opportunity to build our relationship with chocolate lovers in Fiji via the strong distribution network of Motibhai Group and Prouds retail outlets," he said.

Mr Whittaker said while more established brands in the Fijian market would prove to be a challenge, Whittaker's unique manufacturing process and taste would ensure local chocolate lovers would take to the brand.

"As a family and as a company, we are steadfastly committed to producing only chocolate of the highest quality.

"Whittaker's ensures quality by controlling the whole manufacturing process — from bean to bar — from our one factory in Wellington, New Zealand."

Mr Whittaker said the brand was available in 20 markets around the world with the biggest being Australia followed by Malaysia, China and Canada.

"Of strategic importance is the North American and Asian markets and for the Pacific, one of them is Fiji.

"I think Fiji is going to be exponential — we have already seen four times the sales in the first year with Motibhai and its really exciting days ahead for us.

"In the New Zealand market, we are number two approaching number one and we are market leader in the categories we compete in."

Motibhai Group director Tajesh Patel said the Whittaker's brand was already making inroads in the Fijian market.

"Whittaker's were doing some supplying to some companies in Fiji directly before but about two months ago they nominated the Motibhai Group as their distributor in Fiji," he said.

"And that's how we came into partnership with Whittaker's.

"So Motibhai is the main distributor of Whittaker's in Fiji and we will be distributing through our Prouds stores, supermarkets and in time to come petrol stations as well."

| A Fiji Times release  ||  August 24,  2017   |||

Silver Fern Farms has launched a large-scale China chilled pilot with the first sea-freight container shipment of chilled beef as well as multiple air-freight orders of beef and lamb set for customers across China.

The pilot is part of a six-month trial negotiated by the government to test chilled red meat access into the China market. While small-volume air-freight product has been sent into market, it is understood that this is the first sea-freight container to test the market says Silver Fern Farms GM Sales Grant Howie.

"It is important that during this trial period we test the market’s protocols and supply chain for chilled meat at sea-ports as well as via air-freight," Mr Howie says.

"With chilled product in China we need to test the process at scale which is why we have worked with one of our customers to take a full 20ft container of chilled product."

The first sea-freight container leaves New Zealand this week and is due to arrive into China in early September.

"Our relationship with Shanghai Maling has helped facilitate this sea-freight order. We are working with one of Shanghai Maling’s subsidiaries who will distribute Silver Fern Farms chilled beef to a number of its supermarkets in and around Shanghai.

"The cuts they are taking are important. They are primarily secondary cuts of prime Beef - cuts that would otherwise have been sold frozen at lower prices. They have the capability to position these traditional Chinese cuts at a premium in supermarkets."

Silver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s largest meat exporter to China, having achieved $316m of sales to the region in 2016. All of the product entered the market in frozen form.

Silver Fern Farms is also testing protocols for small-scale air-freight orders of beef into key food service distributors who service high-end restaurants and hotels in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and an airfreight order for lamb cuts into a major multi-national high-end supermarket chain.

"For the past 2 years we have been busy developing the premium food service market with our Eating Quality (EQ) Graded Silver Fern Farms Reserve Beef as a frozen product. Our Reserve and Angus Beef frozen programmes are aged for 21 days back in New Zealand before being shipped frozen. Now that we have the ability to ship chilled, that ageing can now occur as it is shipped to China."

"This is a complex large scale chilled pilot to test a variety of market entry options as well as a range of products. We have two air-freight orders destined for our food service customers in Shanghai. They have ordered our value added Silver Fern Farms Reserve Beef, and our food service chilled prime beef product in primary and secondary cut form. They are taking steak cuts, our Silver Fern Farms Reserve oyster blade and rump caps."

"We have also partnered with a major multi-national high-end supermarket chain for an order of lamb cuts, including premium lamb racks. We look forward to further orders at scale so we can test sea-freight container orders once the new season lamb production comes on in coming months."

| A SilverFern Farms release  ||  August 23, 2017   |||

A group of leading New Zealand cherry growers have joined together to export a premium cherry line to the international markets starting in the 2017/18 season.

"Pure Pac consists of a group of 7 passionate Cherry Growers who all own orchards in the Cromwell Area Central Otago," explains Ross Kirk, Chief Executive of Hortinvest which has been contracted as Pure Pac's project manager and packhouse manager. "What makes Pure Pac unique is all the shareholders are grower suppliers. We will grow, pack and market the fruit directly to buyers in the international market. Pure Pac have engaged an experienced team to put together their packhouse, logistics and marketing of our cherries."

As a group they currently have 70ha in production and coming into production and this year they will plant an additional 20,000 trees.

2017-18 will be the first export season for Pure Pac, however the growers have been exporting via other packers/exporters. According to Kirk they got together and decided they would like to work directly with the international market and therefore decided to invest in a state of the art packing house which will be ready for the first cherries to be processed in December 2017.

The harvest starts prior to Christmas and will run till early February.

"We have several varieties. The key export ones are Samba, Lapin, Sweetheart, Staccato and Rainier. In the first season we expect to pack 450mt and over the next 4 years anticipate volumes increasing to 1000mt per annum," said Kirk. "We are growing the varieties that suit the Asian market, they are sweet, juicy and crunchie."

Pure Pac are working with Compac Engineering to put in the latest cherry grading technology, along with some technology which is imported from Italy and France to complete the packhouse set up. The new packhouse will be capable of handling 1200mt’s over the cherry season.

"We are very excited to be launching our two brands at Asia Fruit Logistica: Pure Gold and Gold Reserve," stated Kirk. "The difference in the brands is simply the box and brand design. The quality of the cherries will be the same high quality premium cherries in each box.

"We have very strong demand from Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, we are looking to expand throughout Asia, and we would like to also work with customers from India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan."

Pure Pac will be at Asia Fruit Logisitca as part of the New Zealand Country stand. The team, including some of the grower/directors will be there to meet with customers and discuss the group's cherries and the up coming Cherry season.

| A FreshPlaza release ||  August 23, 2017   |||

Procedure is killing Party’s election hopes

Eminem’s copyright legal proceedings centred on the rapper’s lawyers claiming that the National Party had heisted riffs of the warbler’s Lose Yourself album for its 2014 general election jingle.

The unlikely proceedings conducted in a Wellington courtroom are remembered for sweetening global network talk shows.

Presenters in the United States especially discovered humour in the rendering of the word Eminem due to the squished vowel sounds of their New Zealand counterparts.

The chuckling involved in the parodies attendant on the New Zealand broadcasting patois along with the bizarre courtroom episode we can see now obscured a much more serious intention and in the view of many, a much more dangerous one.

The National Party was determined, even if rather belatedly, as per the disputed song, to lose its old self, slough off its wrinkled skin, and hop disco-style into the age of hip.

This Eminem-style background “music” to the campaign was the pointer to a much deeper strategy designed to attract the very large slice of the electorate both young and old who identify themselves with the contemporary culture represented by rap.

Former premier John Key’s campaign to change the New Zealand flag can now be seen as part of this trendy re-imaging campaign.

The flag replacement scheme was remarkable in that it failed to obtain any traction at all in the media, usually always on for a dig at the established order, and then it collapsed through the absence of any popular momentum at all.

The appeasing of the fashionable Greens by the U-turn on live sheep shipments has left the government with an obviously festering sore as it seeks to compensate double-crossed Middle East interests by building there for free a processing depot for which there is no budget, simply because the construction was and is unofficial.

External affairs allocations are still being combed to pay for it.

A weight of evidence points to the involvement behind this of foreign image consultants.

This explains why the change-the-flag scheme ran alongside the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings and thus of Anzac.

Foreign consultants would not have been aware of the significance of this milestone in the short history of the nation, and especially of the way in which it transcends ideological boundaries.

Similarly with the anti-Israel complicit vote in the dying days of New Zealand’s last tour of duty as a temporary member of the United Nations Security Council.

Foreign advisers would not have been aware of the size of the evangelist-fundamentalist following in New Zealand, traditionally National Party adherents, and the bloc’s sensitivity about anything to do with the holy land.

A further clue to external progressivist influence is the money that the National Government, note government and not the Party, started doling out to the Clinton Foundation at a time when the Clintons were doggedly campaigning in Hillary’s bid for the presidency.

As was seen subsequently the involvement by foreign governments in United States federal and even state elections is prohibited by law. This applies specifically to the financing of individual candidates.

Again a suspicion remains of an external influence, a re-imaging one, behind these donations to the Clinton Foundation, estimated by the Taxpayers Union, to amount to between nine and 10 million dollars, or the equivalent of the annual income tax paid by 899 workers on the average wage.

The unseen advisors had no doubt whatsoever that the Clinton dynasty would resume, and that the hand-outs would be regarded ecstatically here by the very progressives that the National Party now strives so ardently, and so awkwardly, to draw to its side.

 | From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  ||  Thursday 24 August 2017   |||

New Zealand farmers and companies are starting to use Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, data analytics and automation to decrease impact on New Zealand rivers, a leading national tech expert says.

In countries, right across the world the IoT devices are being used to help clean up water, New Zealand IoT Alliance executive director Kriv Naicker says.

Irrigation is by far the largest use of water in New Zealand, making up 65.9 percent of water use between 2013 and 2014, the Ministry for the Environment says.

Places like Israel and California have had to learn how to manage their farms and use of water really well as they don’t have much of it available, Naicker says.

“In New Zealand, we have plenty of water so we haven’t paid as much attention to the impact of farming until recently. There is now a push to make all New Zealand’s waters and rivers swimmable again.

“Earlier this year the government set a new target to have 90 per cent of New Zealand's lakes and rivers reach swimmable water quality standards by 2040. Currently just 72 per cent meet the standard.

“New Zealand can quickly learn from other nations and use sensors to monitor water quality, water levels, nutrient flows and other metrics, analytics to quickly understand what is happening where on the farm and automation and robotics to adjust delivery of nutrients and water to reduce impact on waterways.”

Using soil moisture sensors, analytics and water automation systems, Californian avocado growers have been able to reduce water usage by 75 percent.

A water sensor that will allow people to check the health of waterways has recently been tested on the Manawatu River near Palmerston North. The sensor will allow communities to check the health and safety of their local waterways.

Naicker says the advantages of the ability to remotely track, IoT monitor and then report on the condition of a herd of cows or flock of sheep or quality of water introduces huge efficiencies for the modern farmer.

“They can be alerted to various scenarios in advance and save both time and money by not having to patrol and survey, using satellite technology to receive various information in a proactive fashion.”

“Some good examples of companies providing sensors for the quality of lakes and rivers includes Riverwatch Water Tester in the Wairarapa, Waterforce in Canterbury and KotahiNet in Wellington.

In addition, Spark, Vodafone, and Thinxtra and Kordia are rolling out IoT water management solutions,” he says.

For further information contact New Zealand IoT Alliance executive director Kriv Naicker on 021 8486367 or Make Lemonade NZ editor-in-chief Kip Brook on 025 030188.

|  A MakeLemonade release  ||  August 24,  2017   |||

Tim Flannery is one of the world’s leading environmentalists and a former Australian of the Year. He is travelling to Auckland on 29 August to speak to businesses about what they should be doing to restore the nation’s waterways.

Flannery will be a keynote speaker at The Inconvenient Conference, organised by the Sustainable Business Network. The award-winning author will speak on the Vitality of Water, one of four key trends that are creating massive change – and opportunity – for business.

Tim Flannery was appointed Australia’s first Climate Commissioner. He has named 25 living species and 50 fossil mammal species.

Rachel Brown, CEO of the Sustainable Business Network, says: “Tim Flannery is one of the world’s top authorities on climate change and the environment. The disastrous state of New Zealand’s freshwater is just one way in which the world is changing at an unprecedented rate.

“It’s vital we understand how to adapt and respond. The implications are for New Zealand’s major sectors, particularly agriculture, viticulture and tourism, but it really affects us all. With the election around the corner, this conference is an important time for businesses to grapple with these issues.”

The other three trends the conference will address, in addition to the Vitality of Water, are Smarter Transport, Millennials and the Circular Economy. The conference also includes a showing of the sequel to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, An Inconvenient Sequel.

Other speakers include Lewis Perkins, President of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, USA (by video); Rod Oram, business journalist; Paul Young, founder of Generation Zero; Shruthi Vijayakumar, head of learning and development at Inspiring Stories; and Dorenda Britten, founder of The Britten Institute. For more information go to: sustainable.org.nz | A sustainableBusinessNetwork release  ||  August 23,  2017   |||