Dishwashing debut
Founder of Ecostore Aucklander Malcolm Rands has put his household cleaning product range on the shelves in U.S. chain Meijer Inc.’s 185 stores in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Rands wants to move…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Bald and branded
Air New Zealand’s recent “billboard cranium” marketing stunt has been applauded by American Peter Shankman, author of Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work for their “Tom Sawyer handing out paintbrushes” approach….
Distractions of Youth
Otago University intelligence researcher professor James Flynn is the author of a study published online by the journal Economics and Human Biology which looks at how British teenagers’ cognitive skills have changed over a…
Southeast Asian discoveries
Auckland-based gold exploration company Zedex Minerals Ltd. looks set to begin a drilling programme in Vietnam at the end of February with a potential find of as much as 5 million ounces according to…
Looking at both sides
New Zealand’s health sector is giving a few lessons to its British Columbia counterpart, which sent delegates out in November 2008 to learn about the country’s co-payment system, drug policy and its emphasis on…
Speed Demon’s Dream
Wellington entrepreneur Richard Nowland is the man behind the only jet-powered car ever designed and built in New Zealand. Nowland purchased a Rolls-Royce Avon 206 turbojet engine and intends to transform it into New…
Fresh sense
Supermarket giant Tesco has signed on to use fruit labeling technology developed by New Zealand packaging specialists ripeSense. The color-coded labels let shoppers know how ripe a fruit is by responding to aromas released…
Hot pasties on demand
Gisborne butcher Heath Raggett, 39, owns a shop on Bow Street, near Aberystwyth in Wales where he sells lamb reared on the hills above Cardigan Bay, encouraging locals to eat locally-produced meats. Raggett has…
Tickled pink
New Zealand advertising agency DDB, creators of the pink hugging monster for Pink Batts insulation, has been rated the world’s best agency in the 6th annual Bestadsontv.com rankings; New Zealand agencies Colenso and Saatchi…
Carb Addict
Dr. Simon Thornly, of the Auckland Regional Public Health Service, has published a recent study claiming that foods high in refined sugars have the same addictive qualities as tobacco. According to Thornley, heavily processed…
Madonna’s mad for it
Wellington-based company “Phil & Ted changed my life,” writes Examiner.com’s Kate Byrd of the New Zealand “stroller gurus”, going on to give ten reasons why she loves her buggy. “I researched double strollers for months….
Open up and say ah
The New Zealand Department of Conservation will perform a two-hour necropsy on a 10ft female great white shark at the Auckland Museum in a live operation streamed online, reminiscent of that performed on the…
Flying High
Air New Zealand has made a bold move into the world of sustainability, becoming the first commercial airline to fly using an alternative fuel made from the jatropha plant. The airline recently conducted a…
Drilling For Knowledge
Victoria University’s Tim Naish is one of a hundred scientists from 40 different countries working on a map of climate change. The Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL) is digging deep below the Ross Ice Shelf to determine…
Dining with the Birds
For one month from 9 January until February 2009, in a redwood plantation north of Auckland, between Puhoi and Warkworth, and 10m up a tree, the Yellow House restaurant will serve three-course meals…
Possums Made Good
Founder and CEO of fashion label Untouched World Peri Drysdale – who has an MBE for services to manufacturing and export – began selling garments blended fom possum and merino in 1996, later catching…
Librarian to the Antibodies
15 December 2008 – New Zealand-born CEO of German biotech firm MorphoSys engineer, Dr Simon Moroney is in charge of a different sort of library, an amazing archive containing some 12 billion human antibodies….
Networking in California
Scott’s Ferry-raised Victoria Ransom, 32, now based in Silicon Valley, California, has won $450,000 in an international Internet business competition for her design application to be used on social networking site Facebook. Ransom’s company…
Northern Expansion
08 December 2008 – Wellington clothing company Icebreaker has engaged a distributor in Germany, Sweden and Norway, having also opened its first Eastern European sales and marketing office in the Czech Republic earlier…
Car of the Century
Gibbs Technologies founder and CTO New Zealander Alan Gibbs, 70, is profiled on Michigan Live.com where the entrepreneur discusses the never-seen-before capabilities of his three-seat sportscar Aquada, production of the Quadski and his partnership…
BC Health Sector Move
New Zealand health administrator Nigel Murray has been in Canada this past year having taken up the position of CEO for British Columbia’s Fraser Health Authority, which delivers care to 1.5 million people and…
An Astral Heritage
23 November 2008 – Tekapo’s Graeme Murray – director of Earth & Sky at Mt John Observatory – is the driving force behind obtaining UNESCO World Heritage Starlight Reserve status for the pristine skies…
Waterborne Cars Are Go
16 November 2008 – New Zealand entrepreneur Alan Gibbs, 69, has opened an amphibious vehicle engineering and research centre for his firm, Gibbs Technologies in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Gibbs previewed two of his company’s…
Mail Man Has Role in US
Former New Zealand Post CEO and Royal Mail executive deputy chairman Elmar Toime has been appointed to American online postal service Earth Class Mail Corporation’s board of advisors. Toime – who also led the…
Awarded for Imagination
New Zealand mineral chemist Dr Alan Reid, 77, has won the Ian Wark Medal in acknowledgement for his outstanding contribution to Australia’s prosperity through the advancement of scientific knowledge. One of a number of…
Rethinking Polar Power
Later this month, Meridian Energy will begin work on the most southernmost wind farm in the world, on Crater Hill, Ross Island in Antarctica. The turbines will provide renewable energy to New Zealand’s Scott…
Craved in Canada
Kathmandu founder and owner of design store Nood, or “New Objects of Desire”, Jan Cameron has opened four stores in British Columbia. Nood carries a range of household and personal products, including designer furniture…
KR on Argentinean Edge
27 October 2008 – Saatchi & Saatchi CEO and Lovemarks instigator Kevin Roberts keynoted HSM’s Buenos Aires management conference alongside Harvard U strategy guru Michael Porter, Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz (Economics) and Muhammad Yunus…
Fonterra’s Melamine Nightmare
Criminal contamination of the milk supply chain in China embroiled New Zealandís largest commercial organization Fonterra in a crisis that left four babies dead and 3,000 still in hospital. An estimated 54,000 children were…
In the Hot-seat
New Zealander Geoff Vuleta, co-founder and chief executive of New York-based innovation consultancy company Fahrenheit 212, commutes between the US city, and home to Auckland every 8 weeks. Vuleta discusses his frequent-flyer lifestyle, and…
Tough Gets Going
Sportswear apparel maker Canterbury of New Zealand, which produces the shirts worn by the Scottish Rugby Union team, will this week open its first retail outlet in Europe. Canterbury, which also supplies Glasgow Warriors,…
Pig Cell Go-ahead
New Zealand’s Living Cell Technologies, a company founded by Aucklander Professor Bob Elliott, who has pioneered research in the treatment of type-1 diabetes, has been given approval to trial the transplantation of insulin-producing pig…
For the Animals
Since 2005, Auckland-born Briar Simpson has worked in Japan for the Tokyo branch of non-profit organisation Animal Refuge Kansai, where she finds homes for animals and coordinates fundraising and educational programmes for children….
Defender of the Skies
Air New Zealand is aiming to be the cleanest airline on the planet, recently making headlines with fuel-saving and environmentally conscious initiatives including demonstrating a new way of flying an airplane and testing the…
Greenery in Urban London
New Zealand-born James Fraser founded UK landscape firm Avant Gardener in 1990, which continues to operate from a nursery out of Battersea in London. One of Fraser’s latest projects is profiled in the Telegraph,…
UK Role for Sinclair
Former Auckland Airport chief financial officer Robert Sinclair has been appointed chief executive at Bristol International Airport. In Auckland, Sinclair oversaw a four-year investment programme in expansion, including runways, terminals, car parks and roads….
Flights of Fancy
Chief executive of New Zealand-based Air Sports Peter Newport is the brains behind virtual game Sky Challenge which saw two pilots and a gamer race planes through hoops in the clouds above Spain….
Villa Away from Chateau
Auckland entrepreneur Nick Wood sold internet service provider Ihug in 2003 to Perth company iiNet for $80 million and set up Distinctive Holiday Homes (DHH), a luxury destination club with property around the world….
Pests Transformed
New Zealand possum fur is being imported by Portland-based company Eco-Luxury which produces throws, cushions and bedspreads, “for all of the luxury and none of the guilt.” On a trip to New Zealand,…
Weddings on Ice
Auckland-based bar group Minus5 is opening the first ice-lounge in the United States, in Las Vegas, on September 26. Named for the temperature maintained within its 1,200-square-foot main room – 5 degrees Celsius below…
Look Up Without Pain
New Zealander Darrell Poole invented the neck safety-device Necprotech after surviving a rock-climbing accident in 1998 which saw him fall six metres because of a slack rope. Poole fell after his belayer – the…
In Sheep Code
New Zealand clothing label Icebreaker is enabling its customers to trace their purchased merino garment back to one of the 120 sheep stations where the fibre was grown by entering the individual ‘Baacode’ number…
Controversial Evidence
Professor David Fergusson, founder and director of the Christchurch Health and Development Study, was one of 20 reviewers of the preliminary draft of an American Psychological Association (APA) paper on the mental health effects…
Hill Moves into the US
Michael Hill International (MHI) has purchased 17 stores in the American cities of Chicago and Missouri for a sum of US$5.5 million (NZ$8.1 million). “Chicago is a good market for a newly arrived retailer,…
Cocktails After Angkor
Former Radio New Zealand reporter Dean Williams has turned his talents to the world of hospitality in Cambodia’s popular tourist destination, Siem Reap. According to The Phnom Penh Post: “In September, Williams will open…
Unconventional Movement
New Zealander Grant Harrison, 44, Hutt Valley High School old boy and owner of American health benefits company Humana, one of the largest in the United States, is the man behind bike-share programme
Digging Up the Sandpit
Former Dunedin musterer Ed Mumm moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado and in November 2007 opened the first earthmoving sandpit in the United States, Dig This, where enthusiasts pay top dollar to operate heavy machinery…
Imagination Roars to Life
Christchurch inventor Glenn Martin’s ultralight aircraft, the Martin Jetpack, a $100,000 “jetski for the sky” able to climb to heights of almost 2500m, has been launched at an aerospace show in Wisconsin. No more…
Leave Your Hat On
The Christchurch-designed 2c Solar Light Cap is trialled by a Chicago Tribune reporter who dons the headgear for a camping trip on the Mississippi River. “Part of the appeal of sleeping in the woods…
Hart’s Net Worth
Auckland investor Graeme Hart, 53, owner of the world’s second-largest drink-carton maker, Alcoa Inc. has surpassed both Donald Trump and Sir Richard Branson in the wealth stakes, doubling his bank account over the past…
Snug as a Bug
Merino Kids founder Amie Nilsson designed the award-winning Cocooi Babywrap with biblical swaddling in mind, keeping babies safely on their back and asleep longer. Swaddling creates a slight pressure around the baby’s body that…
Boscombe Breaks
Raglan-based marine consultants ASR Limited have designed a £3 million artificial reef at Boscombe beach in Bournemouth; work will begin on the seabed project in the next few months with a completion date of…
Yacht Technology for Cars
Auckland property developer and yacht maker Jock Freemantle will launch a 2008 version of New Zealand’s first super car, the 550bhp BMW V8 Hulme named after New Zealand’s 1967 Formula One World Champion, Denny…
Powered by Fruit
Kiwifruit rejected for damage or inferiority is used as cattle feed throughout New Zealand, but Crown Research Institute, Scion and ZESPRI Innovation scientists are reconsidering its use as a potential biogas able to generate…
Landing in Hospital
New Zealand company Medtral is attracting American medical tourists 7,000 miles across the globe searching for quality non-acute surgical procedures at cheaper rates than their own system is able to offer. Medtral says it…
Coolest Boat in the World
New Zealand Earthrace skipper Pete Bethune has circumnavigated the globe in record-breaking time, 11 minutes short of 61 days in a £3 million 24m tri-hull wavepiercer powered on cooking oil. “I am elated,” Bethune…
