PROJECT
DEMO PAGE: Pacific Island creative business trade and exchange
Start Date: 3 February 2021
Main Area: Te Whanga-nui-a-Tara WELLINGTON
Admin Town: Lower Hutt
INTENT STATEMENT
To create trade and business opportunities between the print and creative industries of New Zealand and Pacific Islands.
KEY GOALS
- Explore and understand inherent advantages and opportunities so that they may be more fully harnessed
- Stimulating industry development and employment by leveraging the complementary strengths of the Wellington Region and Pacific Island partners.
- Creating high quality digital connectivity both within the Wellington Region and for Pacific Islands partners.
- Building a proud and actively engaged community of common interest, between the Wellington Region and for Pacific Islands partners.
BACKGROUND
Overview
Prompted by the down turn in business during COVID -19 Blue Star has explored alternative growth areas and one of our focus is partnerships in the Pacific Islands.
Being tasked with progressing this I researched demographically, conceptually and logistically relevant markets in these locations. Our understanding that given that Fiji, the country with the largest population in the Pacific Islands is also the most commercially developed of these islands and would likely have their provider bases in the fields of printing and packaging in place, our attention moved to the smaller islands.
Client Background
We researched Pacific Islands being a proximity Island to Auckland as well as their appetite for furthering exports to other Pacific countries and New Zealand.
Rallying the resources from members of Wellington Innovation Network (WIN) and Pacific Exporters Network we made contact with a Trading company located in Nuku’ alofa,Tonga.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
We are currently in negotiations with a companies in the Pacific who have established commercial farm for exports, diversifying over the years to include Imports and complementary services such as a farming supplies store, a quarry for manufactured and raw construction materials, a pest management service, training centre, a foundation for community support and most recently, built Tonga’s first international standard, food processing facility in partnership with the Increasing Agricultural Commodity Trade project (IACT Blue Star’s offering consists of producing boutique food packaging for freezer grade products, marketing materials and a yet to be formalised enablement project for Tongan printing interns.
We also hope to lobby better export tariffs for printing produced for export with the New Zealand Government and government of locations in Pacific Islands so that our cost of production is optimised in the process.
Project time lines are flexible but we believe that we will establish working relationships with a handful of companies in this region within 3-5 years.
Further to this Blue Star, by initiating dialogue with companies in the Pacific Island, hopes to pave a way for New Zealand companies in other sectors wishing to export to this region.
Our good relationship with NZ High Commissions and Trade Offices provides us with warm intro’s to new markets.
