Primary Growth Partnership Annual General Meeting

  • David Carter
Primary Industries

It is a pleasure to be here today at the third Annual Meeting of the Primary Growth Partnership.

I’d like to acknowledge my Associate Minister Nathan Guy, Investment Advisory Panel Chair Bill Falconer, members of the panel, MPI Director-General Wayne McNee, and all co-investors in the Primary Growth Partnership.

The genesis and growth of PGP is something of which we can all be very proud.

It is one of the most ambitious research and innovation programmes ever seen in New Zealand, and it firmly recognises the under- investment in our primary sector over many years.

One of the reasons for the success of the Primary Growth Partnership is that it’s truely about collaboration. It requires co-investment from both government and industry.

So far, around $600 million dollars’ worth of projects have been announced covering just about every facet of our primary sector – from forestry, red meat and wool to dairy, seafood and Manuka honey.

In total, 12 projects so far.

The size and scope of these projects vary enormously.

This puts paid to some recent criticism that PGP provides large-scale grants for big existing companies, and that small groups with innovative ideas are missing out.

This is simply not the case.

In the three years it been operating, the PGP programme has captured a broad spectrum of companies focused on growing our economy through R&D.

The Future Forests Research project is just one example.

This $6.5 million project has developed innovative harvesting technology that will make harvesting in steep country areas much easier.

Currently, harvesting steep land is a high-cost and high-risk activity in New Zealand forests and is a bottleneck to achieving greater profitability in forestry.

This new harvester, which I saw during construction is Nelson, can operate on slopes above 22 degrees and offers the forestry sector significant productivity improvements.

Another highlight is the Farm IQ project, a joint venture between Silver Fern Farms and Landcorp. It is estimated that this programme will help the red meat sector to grow by 50 percent, by 2025.

For our biggest export earner, the dairy sector’s innovation programme, the largest PGP project, will transform the industry by creating new products, increasing productivity on-farm, reducing the environmental footprint, and improving agricultural education.

And for our billion dollar fishing industry, we have projects for both wildfish precision harvesting and for aquaculture.

Looking ahead, the PGP will continue to play a very important role in Government meeting its goal of building exports to 40 percent of GDP by 2025.

It’s going to be a massive challenge to meet this target, but we can’t underestimate how vital primary sector exports will continue to be if we are to get there.

I want to congratulate you all on what you have achieved so far.

My particular thanks go to the Investment Advisory Panel for their sharp analysis of the projects, and to the small, but dedicated, secretariat provided by MPI.

Keep talking to each other, and to the Government, keep developing new and exciting ideas so that, together, we can continue along this path of innovation.

Thank you.