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Recent key developments in MAKE│NZ
• We started our newsletter in the middle of last year in response to feedback from our Community that we didn’t communicate enough about our work. The newsletter is an experiment to respond to that criticism.
And within the newsletter, we have been experimenting. The GuessMasters® competition was one of those experiments. We never had a lot of people participating, and the numbers have dwindled further recently, so we’re stopping with that part.
Overall, and going by the feedback we’ve received, and opening rates, the newsletter has received a positive response. However, we’re recently heard comments that it’s (become) too long. Is it?
• The second question relates to the content itself. Contributions don’t always relate directly to manufacturing, even though we think that it’s still relevant to manufacturers. Overall, do you think that the content is relevant and of interest to you?
For the answer to last week’s question, and our latest entry to the MAKE│NZ GuessMasters’ Honours Board, please go to the end of this newsletter.
• The New Zealand Manufacturing Alliance, which we are a part of, has made a submission to the Ministry of Education’s consultation on work-based learning – we reported on that and described the options presented in our newsletter of two weeks ago (https://makenz.org/2025/02/11/manufacturing-matters-tuesday-top-up-23/ )
The members of the Alliance have unanimously submitted their support for the Independent model, and their rejection of the Collaborative model. You can read the details of the Alliance submission here:
As we understand, pretty much all of the business submissions went that same way.
MAKE│NZ / NZMEA made a separate submission, pointing out how badly the incessant tinkering with vocational education by successive governments has impacted on the actual delivery of vocational education. We illustrated this by referring to the two digital upskilling micro-credential courses that we funded the development of with support from the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Trust. Neither of these is available for delivery at the moment due to a lack of co-operation / support from the government-funded vocational education system. You can find text of that submission here:
• Another question / request: These aren’t the best of times for many manufacturers in our Community and beyond, even though there are signs of an improvement. We’d love to share some positive, exciting news about companies doing well, especially when it comes to winning new business. We realise not everybody is keen to share such good news – but should you be happy to share your good news with our Community, we’d love to hear from you! dieter@makenz.org or sabine@makenz.org
Recent key developments in New Zealand
Recently, the government published – among many other things – two important documents related to economic development. The first one was the RBNZ’s February 2025 Monetary Policy Statement last week. These always make for interesting reading, especially if you are prepared to ‘get under the hood’. We’ll keep it brief here: In summary, things aren’t that great at the moment, but they are about to get a lot better quite quickly …
The output gap – the difference what the economy across all sectors could produce at full capacity, and what it actually produces, sits at -1.7%. That’s a small number in itself, but almost as big as the peak of the COVID crisis. Output gap numbers tend to be small – the worst recently was at -3% during the GFC. But, not to worry, as you can see, a change is just around the corner …
Unemployment is relatively high by New Zealand standards, but not when compared internationally. And, as you can see, it’s just about to take a tumble …
As always, the RBNZ seems to be pretty confident in its predictions. Others appear to be less certain …
• The second publication: Under the stewardship of the new minister for Economic Growth, the Hon. Nicola Willis, MBIE have published the government’s plans for growing New Zealand’s economy (https://www.goingforgrowth.govt.nz/goingforgrowth.pdf ).
It’s an interesting document, as much for what’s not in it. On 44 pages, in amongst many beautiful photos, the Minister lists’ the govern achievements and planned next steps across five topics, starting with Developing Talent. Noteworthy under Underway is this: “Creating a more responsive vocational education and training system to better meet the needs of students, industry and the economy” … see also above.
The remaining for topics are:
*Competitive business settings
*Promoting global trade and investment
*Innovation, technology and science
*Infrastructure for growth
Nowhere in the long list of actions – Delivered or Underway – does the “M-word” appear. Apart from a reference to the Space and Advanced Aviation Strategy 2030 with a target of doubling the value of the sector by 2030, we can’t find any reference to specific support for any sector of the economy, and certainly none referring to manufacturing.
To be fair, among the actions listed under the five topics there are many that – if successfully implemented – should help business across the board to flourish. However, this is no strategy document, there is no discernible underlying vision for how New Zealand can become more prosperous – and certainly no explicit and bold vision, like Australia’s Future Made in Australia, Europe’s Draghi Report, or the USA’s IRA. Now, there may well be a debate over whether any of these visions are the right ones for the country in question, but is it better to have none to start with?
Recent key developments in the World
• There is a lot of (published) uncertainty about global trade patterns, and changes to these patterns as a result of ‘rising geopolitical tensions’. Because we want to experiment with being short, and because it’s said a picture is worth a thousand words, here are two graphs that will help to establish a ‘baseline’ – trading patterns for the world’s two largest economies in 2022. You should be able to enlarge these if you want to look at some of the minor players. One of these minor players is New Zealand, which doesn’t feature on the US graph at all, and shows a significant trade surplus with China, USD 6.9B. In the same year, New Zealand had an overall trade deficit of USD -9.1B. It takes little imagination to work out what would happen if there were to be some form of perturbation in New Zealand’s exports (of mostly primary industry products) to China…
• And, finally, another picture (two, actually) that tells a compelling story. This is the share of list votes for two political parties, AfD and BSW. The darker the shading, the higher the share. We could have picked the graphs for other parties that show – naturally – a complementary picture
Taking the specific party politics out of this, these graphs show how much further political integration between the former West- and East Germany has yet to go. The delineation of the darker-shaded areas exactly reflects the border between the two parts 35 years after their ‘unification’.
To be fair, voting patterns almost always show a strong geographic pattern – driven by socio-economic, cultural and religious factors – but still … ‘culture change’ takes a long time, as they say …
• And the correct answer to last week’s question is –
90 t of recycled metal, used by A.W. Fraser to make to machined bronze components.
And the winner is – finally – Gareth Hobbs. No one deserves winning this final competition more than Gareth! The Runner-up is Steve Lockhart. If people from other members had been as active in this as Hamilton Jet, we’d still be going …
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