Waikato Business News August/September 2021

WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS August/September 2021
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Enlighten Designs named finalist in New
Zealand International Business Awards
Hamilton-based website design and software development
company, Enlighten Designs, has been shortlisted in the Best
Emerging Business category for the prestigious New Zealand
International Business Awards.
The Awards are run by
New Zealand Trade
and Enterprise (NZTE)
and celebrate the success
of New Zealand businesses
on the world stage, coupled
with excellence and innovative
practice. Over the last
50-years, many of New Zealand’s
iconic brands have been
inducted into the awards hall
of fame including Fisher &
Paykel Healthcare, Xero and,
more recently, companies such
as Timely.
The Awards involve eight
award categories (including
a Supreme Award chosen by
judges) with the winners set to
be announced at a ceremony in
Auckland on 14 October, Alert
Levels permitting.
Enlighten Designs has been
recognised for bringing New
Zealand innovation to the
global stage. More specifically,
it has been lauded for its artificial
intelligence projects and
global work with Microsoft
as its provider of data journalism,
where Enlighten has
powered popular data visualisations
used across a number
of leading international
news media sites. Founder
and CEO of Enlighten, Damon
Kelly, says he is immensely
proud that the business has
been recognised as a finalist
after an intensive judging
process, and that the accolade
comes at a time of real growth.
“As a proud Kiwi company
punching well above its
weight on the international
stage, we’re honoured to be
named as finalist in the New
Zealand International Business
Awards,” he says.
“Instead of reducing our
staff numbers when COVID-
19 first hit, we doubled down
and redeployed our people
to focus on our international
expansion. We’re now seeing
those benefits flow through
with our international presence
having grown significantly
in the last 18 months. For the
first time, our overseas services
have outstripped our domestic
offer, and we’re currently
hiring more talent to keep up
with this demand.
“The accolade is an
acknowledgement of the
dedication, hard-work and
creativity our team has
put into some key projects.
The fact that our Waikato-based
team is creating
cutting-edge innovation
that’s changing the world is
truly remarkable, and so I’m
delighted our efforts have
been recognised in this way,”
concludes Kelly.
As a proud Kiwi
company punching
well above its weight
on the international
stage, we’re honoured
to be named as
finalist in the New
Zealand International
Business Awards.
New Zealand International
Business Awards convenor of
judges David Downs says the
number of finalists in this year’s
Awards is testament to the standards
being set by exporters
during a uniquely challenging
period for businesses.
Damon Kelly,
Founder & CEO
of Enlighten
Designs
“Even in normal times
becoming a finalist in the
New Zealand International
Business Awards is no mean
feat – entrants have to complete
detailed applications,
and then present to our judging
panels with 20 minutes
to explain why their business
should be recognised.
“It’s even more impressive
to come through that process
with flying colours despite all
of the challenges of the last
two years. We’re genuinely
privileged as judges to hear
from these remarkable people
and businesses.
“We’re seeing a continual
evolution and lifting of the bar
from our export community,
who are leading the way in telling
their stories in international
markets and deeply connecting
with their customers and what
matters to them.
“Success in exporting is so
much more than the quality
of your product or service. It
means building strong relationships
with customers,
investors and partners, having
a real grasp of what value
you’re delivering, and also
the resilience and courage to
deliver that value in new ways,
as we’ve seen in the last year.
“In 2021 we’ve seen a
group of finalists come through
that captures these qualities,
and also represents the hard
work and the contribution that
export business make to our
economy and the communities
we live in.
“New Zealanders should
take a lot of pride in these
businesses, and in our export
sector in general. Their
innovation and ambition
will help shape the future of
this country.”
Looking after
what we’ve got
Spring has sprung but it’s probably a bit
early for farmers to start putting in silage
yet, although if you take a drive around
Waikato at the moment you’ll see a green
lushness all over the land such as most of
the rest of the world would love to own.
We’re an extraordinarily
fertile little
chunk of territory,
here in the Waikato basin.
The area is about 120km long
by 80km wide, much of it
flat or gently-rolling country,
with several small ranges
of hills running more or less
through the middle of it north
to south – the Hapuakohe
Ranges north-east of Huntly,
Te Miro, Maungakawa and
Te Tapui nor-east of Cambridge,
and Maungatautari to
the south-east.
Along the northern boundary
(and keeping the Aucklanders
confined to their
own backyards) are the Bombay
Hills; along the eastern
side are the Kaimai-Mamaku
Ranges; to the west
the Hakarimata Ranges and
Pirongia; and guarding our
southern boundaries are the
Rangitoto and Hauhangaroa
Ranges.
The great basin within
these confines is full of fertile
soil, some of it metres
deep and said by some to be
some of the best soil in the
world; and there is thick peat,
dense swamp, and also good
rolling country that provides
stock with flood-proof land
in times of heavy storms.
As well, the region is
liberally laced with drains
and creeks and streams and
rivers, few of which run out
of water even in the driest
summers. The Waikato and
Waipa Rivers, of course, are
enormous reservoirs of water,
always. And, of course, vital
to any heavily-stocked area,
there is the largely-reliable
rainfall of something more
than 1200mm a year.
We start gagging and crying
drought if we don’t get a
goodly shower at least every
fortnight during the summer,
and winters and spring
are always great times for
restocking rain-water tanks
and farm ponds, as well as
the region’s numerous waterfowl
lakes and hydro dams.
A century ago, men from
eastern Europe, North America,
the Netherlands and
Great Britain began draining
the vast swamps that covered
much of the central Waikato
region, all the way north
from Te Awamutu to Ngatea.
They wore flannel shirts,
felt hats, dungaree trousers,
and just below the knees
they tied bowyangs to keep
the sodden trouser-legs from
catching and restricting the
flexibility of the knee.
They did their gut-busting
work with sharp axes,
spades, shovels, hand-drags,
and murderously-dangerous
timber-jacks, and occasionally
they used blasting
powder and huge, singing,
Tasmanian-toothed, two-man
cross-cut saws.
Sometimes they also
resorted to two or four or
six immensely powerful,
wonderfully gentle draught
horses to help clear away
some of the ancient, waterlogged
and long-buried
fallen forest giant logs that
lay across the paths of their
intended drains.
These men and their
basic tools, working all day
in mud and sludge and running
water, dug hundreds
of miles of drains, slowly
allowing the land to drain
so that it could be fenced
and cultivated and planted in
grass, and then stocked with
high-production cows and
beef cattle and sheep.
In the process, of course,
and almost certainly unwittingly,
they destroyed the
long-time habitat of vast forests
containing millions of
magnificent kahikatea, great
flax groves, immense areas
of raupo and teatree.
Dozens of shallow lakes,
part of the centuries-old
flight path and food-bowls
of countless migratory birds
including such beautiful
specimens as the kotuku,
trickled their life away into
the new drains.
And as they did so, so
the birdlife disappeared.
Fernbirds, crakes, rails, bitterns,
herons, the ubiquitous
pukeko and a myriad ducks
all found their almost limitless
homelands were withering
and turning to caked,
cracking mud, and then
becoming short-cropped
green grass enclosed by
fences.
Sadly, we can’t turn the
clock back a century and
more to those pristine days,
nor really would we want to.
To some fair extent the livelihood
of the nation depends
on the productivity of this
richly fertile land, and few of
us would be willing to shrink
our way of life to return the
land to its former glory.
Yet there is a special beauty
in what we now have. Get
on any high point anywhere
overlooking the Waikato
basin and if you look closely
you will be astounded at the
hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of trees that have
been deliberately planted all
over the region.
A great number of them
are non-native deciduous
specimens – poplars, planes,
ash, liquidambar, elms,
flowering cherry, barberry,
swamp cyprus, and a range of
oaks. And there are the evergreens
– eucalypts, pines,
redwoods, lawsoniana, hawthorn,
and others.
Collectively they provide
wonderful shade for stock,
and food, shelter and nesting
sites for countless birds and
a whole host of other small
wildlife, both native and
introduced.
And, particularly in the
past half-century, an increasing
number of native trees,
shrubs, ferns and other species
have been planted on
purpose by a growing number
of farmers, small-block
owners, urban residents
and people keen to see such
growth flourishing throughout
the region.
Lakes and waterways
especially have been targeted,
along with difficult-to-manage
corners and
hillsides on farms, often with
specimens that will provide
good food sources for native
birds throughout the year.
Places such as
Pukemokemoke,
Kakepuku,Te Kowhai, Lake
Serpentine, Lake Hakanoa,
Ngaroto, the Kaniwhaniwha
Stream, Maungatautari,
the Waitakaruru Arboretum
and Sculpture Park, among
a raft of others, all have
flourishing and well-nurtured
native plantings which
are all helping to boost the
region’s native bird and
other wildlife.
Tui are now commonly
heard chortling and yodelling
in the gardens of Te Awamutu
and Cambridge residents, as
well as Hamilton, Morrinsville,
Huntly, Te Aroha, Raglan;
the kowhai plantings at
Te Kowhai are paying dividends
in attracting tui and
bellbirds; at Lakes Ngaroto
and Serpentine, Hakanoa and
Waikare waterfowl numbers
are on the increase.
It’s because more food
is available more often
throughout the year.
No doubt it’s also because
a dedicated army of people
spend countless hours
patrolling traplines, trying
to keep rat, mustelid and
wildcat killer numbers at
bay so the birds can breed
unmolested.
Farmers on the land are
doing pretty much the same
thing – planting crops now,
shutting up paddocks for
stored stock-food of silage
and later hay, taking necessary
steps to keep unwanted
weeds such as buttercup,
thistles, ragwort, gorse or
blackberry out of their pastures,
hedgerows, and plantations.
The more grass you have
the more cows or sheep or
cattle you can feed, and the
more milk or wool or meat
you can produce.
It’s sort of similar to
earlier times, really.
Except that it’s quite
different.