The World is here to play!

The RWC has finally arrived, it is great to seeing everyone getting involved, both businesses supporting our adopted team, Namibia, and the residences showing their supported team.  I must say I felt a bit guilty when my South African neighbours had their All Black supporter’s flags up before us.

Don’t miss the opportunity to support Namibia at our next Business After 5, scheduled for the evening they will be playing South Africa.

Business After 5

At our last event our speaker was Rod Drury, the founder of Xero and a founding director of the Pacific Fibre initiative.  

Rod challenged businesses to lift their game.  He spoke of the low cost of leisure in New Zealand and how this discouraged business owners to build world-class businesses.  One of his threads was the importance of businesses focusing on export opportunities, but also the importance of smaller local business raising productivity and how that is important for New Zealand’s overall success.

At our next event on September 22 we will have representative of Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development to speak about how they can help businesses improve performance and grow.  In particular they will be speaking about assistance with Research and Development which is important for local anufacturers and businesses supporting horticulture in the area.

Strategic Planning Process

The committee has dedicated a large amount of time recently to developing a strategic plan, looking out over the next 10 years.   Thank you to all those business representatives who attended our focus groups, your feedback was invaluable.   It is great to know we are generally on the right track.

We will be presenting the final plan at our AGM in October.

As well as this process we have been representing your interests by making submissions on the Franklin Local Plan and the Auckland Spatial Plan.  We believe that Auckland Council must be reminded of the importance of the fertile volcanic soils of our region and the significant contribution businesses in our region already make.

I look forward to seeing you at our next event – please make sure you RSVP as space is limited. 

Go the All Blacks…