Abby Stewart visits the small businesses thriving in Manawatū-Whanganui and learns how Vodafone is keeping regional New Zealand connected. 

Content created in paid partnership with Vodafone. 

The staff at MacBlack in Whanganui make their primary industry timber yard seem like an artisan workshop. The younger staff, in blue jeans, five panel hats and black t-shirts folded at the sleeves, look like they could be working in an Auckland advertising agency if it weren’t for the sawdust covering their clothes. Their older colleagues treat their work with the precision of architects. 

Just a couple of blocks from the banks of the Whanganui river that carves through the centre of the city, the team at MacBlack are busy processing their sustainably harvested timber. Their wood has become so popular they are building an additional 320 m2 shed to keep up with demand. 

MacBlack is part of a vibrant emerging Whanganui economy, a key element in a resurgence that is quickly attracting new residents to the region. In October the population of Whanganui hit 48,100 – its largest ever headcount – and is set to reach 50,000 for the first time in its history in the next two years. As the pandemic has revealed that many of us can work from almost anywhere, and living costs in the major centres have forced a reconsideration of the quarter acre dream, Manawatū-Whanganui is among the regions that are being seen in a whole new light. 

Thanks to a thick covering of native bush, forestry and sawmilling were an essential part of the Manawatū-Whanganui region’s 19th-century settler economy. MacBlack is a distinctly modern revision of this early timber industry. The company utilises a long list of apps and programmes to manage their projects, complete their timesheets, pay staff and communicate with an ever-growing number of clients. Owner Richard Thompson loves wood and is an advocate for its role in a more sustainable future for New Zealand.

One of the key sources of MacBlack’s supply is the Papaiti forest owned by Thompson’s family. “We started planting over 30 years ago and now are starting to get some really lovely trees,” he says during a tour of the MacBlack timber yard.

At 3pm a bell rings across the yard and the staff all head in for a smoko. The crew chat easily over coffee. Thompson is proud of his MacBlack team, his company and his town.

“Whanganui has got the sense of a city that’s had a bit of a renaissance. The fact that there are people coming to live here creates economic development which creates jobs, and that creates more opportunity for people to come in,” he says. 

“There’s a lot of young people who have moved here and a number of our employees have come here looking for somewhere to live that’s not in a big centre and somewhere where they can afford to buy a house. These are people that have lived around the world and they’ve got some really amazing skills and they bring a lot to the business.” 

One of these people is MacBlack employee George Wright, who moved here from England two years ago and fell in love with Whanganui. Ask him what keeps him here and he doesn’t have to think long. 

“The people. The drive they have to make this place something special. The sense of community I’ve found. Those two things combined just make me excited to be here and feel a part of something moving in such a positive direction. It’s a real hidden gem,” he says.

To allow the regions to embrace this opportunity their infrastructure needs to keep up with the growth. That’s why Vodafone is fast tracking its investment into its phone and internet networks across regional New Zealand. The Manawatū-Whanganui region was the first to get upgraded and earlier this year Vodafone switched on 5G in Palmerston North and Whanganui.  

Digital infrastructure investment needs to stay ahead of the region’s growth to ensure it can reach its potential, explains Vodafone’s head of small to medium enterprise, Annaliese Atina. “It’s like roading, if you don’t build more highways and roads as the population increases, you get traffic jams. If we don’t invest in internet networks, we’ll get digital traffic jams.” 

In 2020 data use on Vodafone’s networks increased by 56% as New Zealanders relied on mobile technology and digital services to work and live under the demands of Covid-19. That growth is set to continue as part of the digital “new normal” – and it’s also allowing places like Whanganui to thrive. Additional communications infrastructure is essential to ensure the regions can embrace the way tech is changing how we work, says Atina. 

“Telecommunications keep our customers connected to their customers and give them the mobility to work from wherever they choose. Not everyone wants to work in a big city.” 

A year and a half ago Genie De Wit and her husband Kelvin made that move, inspired by friends’ passion for their life in Whanganui. They packed up their business (and their rabbits) in Auckland and moved to Whanganui. Now the couple run Monster Illustration and Design from their home office. De Wit’s popular Instagram account Bunny Eats Design chronicles her work as a home cook, food stylist and photographer. Her food photos are created on the floor of her villa, using the daylight coming through the french doors, in a setup so simple it’s hard to recognise the lush final results.

Her Instagram feed also portrays a working from home idyll. Ducks glide through Virginia Lake while cherry blossoms bloom. Her lifestyle in Whanganui gives her access to something she was always chasing in Auckland. 

“People in Whanganui have time,” she says. “Everything’s so close, and all the people we’ve met here are really creative.” 

The majority of the De Wits’ clients are Auckland based, and the couple were concerned they would lose work by moving so far from the city. But every one of their clients has remained loyal, a clear tribute to Genie’s talents. She does the design, creates the recipes, photographs the food. But while it’s possible for her to do this all from the floor of her Whanganui home, it relies on good digital infrastructure for it to become a successful business. 

“Connectivity is key and has really changed the way people can get income. With connectivity, our small business can reach more people across New Zealand,” says Atina. 

Vodafone wants its technology and communications infrastructure to allow innovative businesses to function and thrive from anywhere in the country. The power of 5G has the potential to change the business landscape for Manawatū-Whanganui, says Atina. 

“It’s giving our business owners what they rightfully deserve. It’s about tripling mobile capacity and increasing coverage and speed and reliability. As businesses grow they need network reliability because our time poor small business owners can’t afford disruptions. We have to lay the foundations for the future.”

An hour down SH3, Palmerston North is the homebase for mobile catering company Crafted and Co and its small fleet of food trucks servicing the lower North Island. Owner-operator Kelly Melody was born and bred in Palmerston North. She describes the city as a “family town” with a “really positive vibe”.

“We love being Palmy based, our customers are super supportive and always happy to support local. Local businesses support each other and we love the central location which gives us great access to the rest of the lower North Island,” says Melody.

Crafted and Co tapped into the rise of the food truck movement and now cater all types of events. In 2015 a friend asked Melody and her husband James to cater their wedding. Six years later the bookings haven’t stopped and their trucks roll up at weddings across the lower North Island. Despite the uncertainty of Covid-19, wedding season has just begun and Crafted and Co is booked solid. As well as weddings the company hosts events, and are a part of the popular monthly Block Party Street Festival in Te Marae o Hine at the heart of the city. Organised by Crated and Co employee Agnieszka Witkowski, the event brings in a DJ and a “cool little community” of food trucks.

Melody is quick to shout out the role her staff – Agnieszka, Tia, Emily, Kim, Will, Jess, Elise and Melody’s own mum – have played in the company’s success. Technology plays a major part in their operation too. A Vodafone customer, Crafted and Co relies on connectivity to coordinate its fleet and the team. They use social media to keep customers informed on where their trucks will be and when, and a range of digital tech to streamline their work. 

“We try to automate as much of the basics as we can. We have an app for everything,” says Melody. 

When Kirsty Porter was looking for a venue to host exhibitions, gigs, workshops and markets for the local community of artists and musicians, “we didn’t see a place for us in Palmy and so we built it.” That was seven years ago. Porter – an artist, activist and educator at Te Manawa art, science and history museum – helped create Snails: Artist Run Spaces with the financial support of the Palmerston North City Council. Snails features artists’ studios, a gallery and twice-monthly gigs, workshops, markets and open days. The space is simultaneously expansive and cosy with red leather booths, a bar covered in lamps and art, and a stage with a velvet backdrop.

“I wish we had a Snails in our town,” is a comment Porter says she often hears from touring bands. But what is it that she thinks makes Snails so special? 

“We offer manaakitanga,” she says.  

You can feel the generous intention behind the venue as soon as you enter. They’ve created a welcoming and inclusive place, revolving around a community in which Porter is active. She’s  especially passionate about helping Palmerston North’s young and emerging artists. 

“The gallery is really a space for people who want to have a first show. We take photos and give them some internet presence so they’ve got something to give to the next gallery.” 

Social media has been essential to the success of Snails. It’s a platform to showcase the work of new talent, and is used to promote events and broadcast exhibition openings on Facebook Live.  

Back in Whanganui, technology is providing a connection between traditional tikanga Māori and a new audience and clientele for artist and musician Tom Carroll (Ngāti Maru, Hauraki). Carroll makes taonga pūoro, hand-carved Māori wind instruments from native timbers and foraged materials such as shells, crafted using traditional and modern methods. 

He has a similar “old meets new” approach to selling his pieces. Although he’s been carving taonga pūoro for 10 years, it was when he started using Instagram to promote and sell his work that sales really took off. While he also sells his taonga pūoro through Masterworks Gallery in Auckland, social media has become Carroll’s primary market place. It helps that his Instagram feed features gorgeous photos of his work by his partner, photographer Tess Charles, who he lives with in the seaside suburb of Castlecliff.

Carroll left Whanganui for Melbourne after high school and returned home a few years ago. He’d been told the city had a new vibe, he says, and a greater interest in culture – especially in arts and music.

“I’d heard that Whanganui had changed a lot and had developed a lot. I felt like maybe this is a cool place to base myself as an artist and maybe cheaper too,” he says. “On a wider cultural level I love the fact that my work is going towards a greater movement, within Māori music, or within taonga pūoro.

He’s also found a lifestyle he couldn’t get anywhere other than a place like Whanganui. “I love the fact that I can work my own hours while doing something that I really love doing… while being able to play golf sometimes,” he says with a smile. 

This lifestyle is proving appealing to more and more New Zealanders. That doesn’t surprise Atina, who sees something special in the parts of the country beyond the big cities. And it’s why she – and Vodafone – are so invested in their success. 

“Regional New Zealand is the heart of Aotearoa. You can cruise into a place like Coromandel or Taranaki and it feels good. People are genuine, people smile at you.

“Our hope is that other big organisations continue to invest in the regions so they can keep growing, and be even more prosperous than they are today. We’ll keep building the phone and internet networks, so that businesses and people can thrive.”

New Zealand’s youth are helping shape a declaration to Apec leaders as the region sets a plan spanning the next 20 years. The Spinoff spoke to three delegates ahead of the Apec youth summit. 

This content was created in paid partnership with Mfat.

Jess Jenkins (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa) doesn’t see the task of tackling climate change, or Covid-19, as a burden. 

“As soon as people start thinking about burdens, they start thinking about the consequences of that burden,” says the 18-year-old award-winning orator from Tītahi Bay, Porirua.

“And rather than a consequence of a burden, I like to think of it as an opportunity to tackle or a barrier to overcome.”

Jenkins was meant to be studying at Harvard University this year, but Covid-19 put that plan on hold. Instead she is preparing for November’s Voices of the Future youth summit for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec), part of the final act in New Zealand’s hosting of Apec 2021. 

She is one of four representatives from Aotearoa: Shisla Macleod, 22, helps shape trade policy for the New Zealand Customs Service; 24-year-old Lit Wei Chin oversees climate change and sustainability at Auckland Unlimited; and Sophie Handford, the 20-year-old Kāpiti Coast district councillor who helped coordinate the 2019 School Strike 4 Climate NZ.

They are just a few of the region’s nearly one billion young people whose schooling, training or jobs have been disrupted by the upheaval wrought by Covid-19. The immediate impact of the pandemic is set against the long-term impacts of climate change. With Apec members trying to reset their economies and New Zealand leading talks on Apec’s goals for the next two decades, the summit is a chance for young people to have their voices heard at this important moment. 

Most people know about Apec conferences from the obligatory “family photo” of leaders posing in local attire. The photos have showcased Peruvian and Chilean ponchos, Australian stockman raincoats, Malaysian and Indonesian batik shirts, and, when New Zealand last hosted member economies (it’s Apec custom to refer to members as “economies”) in 1999, All Blacks jackets. When leaders met virtually in July, their digital background featured ferns and Māori design.

Since New Zealand took on hosting responsibilities in December 2020, hundreds of virtual meetings have been held with the region’s various government ministers, senior public officials, central banks and business leaders. Against the unique backdrop of Covid-19, New Zealand has focused on how the forum responds economically. The forum has examined how women, indigenous peoples, small and medium-sized businesses and other sections of society disproportionately bearing the economic brunt can be included in the recovery in the short and long term, and how a greener, more digital future can be realised.

The intergenerational vision of these policies made at Apec this year means the mandate for youth voices is more important than ever. Coming together virtually across two days in the second week of November, at the same time as Apec leaders meet, over 100 youth delegates will learn from experts, and discuss the issues facing their generation. At the end of the summit they will issue a declaration setting out their vision for the region and how their economies should achieve it. 

This year’s delegates have started drafting their declaration based on New Zealand’s focus areas. At the end of the youth event, in an unprecedented move, delegates will hand it over to the forum’s chair, prime minister Jacinda Ardern.

Jenkins isn’t focused on whether future tech pioneers can conjure up a new dimension by 2040 or if humans will have made landfall on Mars. Her vision of the world starts and ends with living in the here and now, addressing today’s issues on the planet we’ve been gifted. 

“The world in 20 years’ time, it will be what we make it,” she says. 

She says the more voices that are represented and heard, the better the conclusion Apec economies will land on. Jenkins is used to using her voice. In 2020, her final year at Tawa College, she won the Race Unity Speech Awards with a monologue entitled “Titiro whakamuri, kia anga whakamua – To face the future, look to the past”. For just over nine minutes, her speech picked apart her identity as a kiritea Māori, one who speaks “in the tongue of the obvious” but cannot speak the reo of her tīpuna yet. She shared the doubt and confusion that comes from her divisive past as she pondered what a unified future might look like.

With one foot in te ao Pākeha and one in te ao Māori, her contribution to New Zealand Apec 2021 reflects the host economy’s concerted effort to embrace and elevate indigenous voices and knowledge and their role in shaping the region’s response to its challenges. The understanding and appreciation indigenous people have for their tūrangawaewae represents a powerful source of solutions to the world’s great problems, says Jenkins. Especially when it’s often indigenous populations that face a greater impact from issues like climate change and Covid-19. 

Tikanga Māori features heavily in New Zealand’s digital presence at Apec – te reo Māori and waiata Māori are used where possible to highlight the importance of indigenous inclusion. A report commissioned by Apec New Zealand highlighted the potential of indigenous economies like the Māori economy, which grew from $16.5b in 2006 to over $69b in 2019. That report provides an evidence-based platform for other Apec economies to begin strengthening their own ties with indigenous cultures.

“Taking advice from those who were here first and have a foundational understanding of the whenua is so important,” Jenkins says. 

“There’s so much metaphoric beauty within te reo Māori and some of the understandings behind it can really set a great new normal for us in this difficult time of reset and turbulence.”

Shisla Macleod first appreciated diplomacy when she observed her New Zealand father and Brazilian mother navigate their relationship, embracing their differences and treasuring their similarities. Her dual identities have given her a unique understanding of her role as an Apec youth delegate. 

Within the trade policy area she works on at Customs, Macleod has seen how the pandemic affects small and medium-sized enterprises, indigenous economies and women-led businesses. And across the region it has amplified pre-existing inequalities and highlighted society’s vulnerabilities. It suddenly forced us to think about how many people in Aotearoa lacked access to the internet when we were forced to work and study from home. 

“That’s just something that should have been thought about long ago,” she says. “We can try and fix [the inequalities] now for the future. And it’s not too late.”

After a series of meetings chaired by New Zealand earlier this year, the 21 Apec economies showed support for easing some trade restrictions to allow vaccination rates in Apec countries to grow. The consensus showed the willingness of each represented economy to address the inequalities that have come to light due to Covid-19 and vaccine access.

The group is eager to define how future youth summits might be influential, having wondered what will happen to the 2021 youth declaration once it’s handed over to Ardern. They would like to see their successors meet earlier in a host year so that their statement informs officials and leaders’ subsequent meetings, rather than being tacked on after their talks. Seeing the passion and drive in her generation gives her hope for the future, and she wants their voice taken seriously.

“There has been so much mobilising globally about the issues that we’re all facing and I’m thinking ‘these are the future generations of leaders’ that are going to be making the decisions. That really does bring me hope,” she says.

“We’re still basically fighting for the same thing. It’s just that now, we don’t have to fight for it on the streets, we can talk to them and solve this in a way that works for both of us.”

Lit Wei Chin “fell” into Auckland Unlimited’s climate change team. But in hearing how he progressed from advocating for youth to learning science at university to combating one of the world’s biggest issues in his day job, where he is now feels like something he has always been working towards.

While learning about the theories underlying climate change for his science degree, he came across the 1987 UN Brundtland report, famous for defining sustainable development as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

That definition, he says, spurred him on to figure out how he could live up to it in a job. Landing a spot in Auckland Unlimited’s graduate programme exposed him to various departments like international education and tourism, and then, as he says, he fell into the team where his passions matched with his purpose. Chin helps develop projects aimed at building a low-emissions, climate-resilient economy for his region. 

As an economy creating 84% of its energy through renewable sources, New Zealand has positioned itself well as a leader in the renewable energy space. In its role as host, it has supported the long-standing call for the phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and is working to refresh Apec’s list of environmental goods that promote the trade of products that benefit the environment.

The Aotearoa youth delegation is focused on “a future for all”, one of the four themes of Voices of the Future. The theme will consider the way the pandemic has created “the opportunity to grow our economies differently”. Chin says this is a chance to share the responsibility of remaking the region for the better and for his generation to have an impact on what that looks like. 

“We can’t do it as just youth by ourselves. We have to ensure that there is that cooperation.”

Chin and his peers are aware how critical this year’s intergenerational mandate makes the youth declaration they will present to prime minister Jacinda Ardern in just over a fortnight. Decisions have been made for their generation well before some of them were even born, he says, so the delegates have future generations in mind when creating a 20-year plan that is adaptable and always relevant.

His vision for 2040 is a world that is sustainable, resilient to all kinds of disruption, inclusive and full of equal opportunities – a world we should have now, he says.

“I see the future having a wide range of voices and perspectives on how we can bring that all together. That sums up our delegation quite well – having all those different perspectives and different ages and different lifestyles that we’ve grown up in.”

The Apec Voices of the Future conference takes place virtually on November 9 and 10.