Waikato Business News July/August 2019

WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS July/August 2019
5
HMC recruit brings
agribusiness
experience
Kate Robinson
Kate Robinson (nee Webber)
has joined the HMC Communications
team as senior
account manager, bringing
with her sound knowledge
and experience in agriculture
and more than 22 years public
relations experience. Born
and bred on a dairy farm near
Cambridge, Robinson spent
nearly six years with Baldwin
Boyle Group in Hamilton and
Auckland providing public
relations counsel to some
of New Zealand’s largest
agricultural businesses, and
joined the communications
team at DairyNZ in 2007. She
was also part of the team that
coordinated the transition
from Dexcel to DairyNZ, which
included a major rebranding
campaign. Robinson is based
in Kinloch and has two children
aged 6 and 8.
Once widely prescribed before prohibition
in the early 20th century, medicinal
cannabis is experiencing a revival as
the endacannabinoid system becomes a
subject of study.
“The premise of medical cannabis
is everyone's got an endocannabinoid
system,” says Cannasouth chief operating
officer Nic Foreman. “Us and all
the animals have endocannibinoids that
we use for the functioning of a lot of
our physiological subsystems, and it
just turns out that the compounds in the
[cannabis] plant mimic the ones in the
body.”
“It's like you live in a house,” says
chief executive Mark Lucas, who has a
deft way with analogies. “You thought
you had two storeys and then you realise
there's a third floor to the house,
that's how big a deal the endocannibitially
be issued within a month
or two, and then by growing
cultivars, with two or three
months to grow the first crop.
“Then we go into the manufacture
medicine space. You’re
not just doing a simple extract,
there's your product, you're
going into a space where it's
GMP [good manufacturing
processes] quality, you've got
to validate, you've got to have
shelf life.
“It's going to take time, and
we’ve been clear all the way
through, this is a marathon and
not a sprint.”
That said, they are putting
in a burst at the moment.
“We live and breathe it. We
love it. Entrepreneurs just love
this stuff, this is a dream come
true.
“If you can’t make the most
of a once in a lifetime opportunity
by working hard and
surrounding yourself with the
smartest people you can find
then you've made a mistake.”
Research has been a focus for chief executive Mark Lucas and the Cannasouth team.
Plant’s unique qualities
noid system is.
“The fact that the plant has cannibinoids
is interesting but the fact that we
have an endocannibinoid system that
controls so many of our regulatory subsystems,
now that's really interesting.”
That sees Cannasouth using expensive
equipment to research the individual
cannabinoids in the cannabis plant,
but also how they might work together
in different combinations.
The two main cannibinoids are CBD
and THC, the latter producing the high.
Treatment of some conditions may
require an element of THC. “These
things work in unison, if you isolate a
single molecule it's often not as effective,
there seems to be some synergistic
effect that goes on.”
He points out that most people taking
the medicines don’t want to be high,
but just want to feel better, though there
may be a place for the wellbeing effect
for the likes of palliative care.
“We're really just at the beginning
of the journey of discovery as to what
the individual cannabinoids can do and
what in unison with other cannibinoids
you can start to target,” says Lucas.
“I put it this way: it's like notes of
music - there's only a limited number
of notes but you can put them together
in an almost limitless number of ways.”
Ken Webb and Ben
Kershaw, Hunter Campbell
Recruitment
firms merge
Specialist recruitment firms
Hunter Campbell and Numeric
have joined forces. Cambridge-based
Numeric, which
specialises in tax recruitment
as well as accounting and
finance, will now operate as
Hunter Campbell Waikato
following a merger with Auckland-based
Hunter Campbell.
Hunter Campbell Waikato is
led by Ben Kershaw, who has
extensive experience building
and leading teams in professional
services firms and large,
global organisations in New
Zealand and Australia. Hunter
Campbell is a privately-owned
firm specialising in recruiting
accounting and finance as
well as supply chain, procurement
and operations roles.
CRV appoints
AB manager
CRV Ambreed has appointed
Craig Scott as its new national
artificial breeding manager.
Scott joins the CRV team from
pregnancy testing company
Ultrascan Limited, where he
was the national franchise
manager. Scott, who grew
up on a Taumarunui sheep
and beef block, has worked
in the agricultural, sports
and information technology
sectors, including a 10-year
stint as manager for Verusco
Technologies, supplying video
analysis software and statistics
to rugby union teams.