Smart & Systematic move up Value Chain in Te Arawa
Te Kotahitanga o Te Arawa is systematically moving up the value chain from its initial role as a transactor of fish quota received through Treaty settlements.
The trust, which represents 10 iwi of Te Arawa waka, will shift to a deliberate strategy, migrating away from being virtual commodity traders of fish quota, to high-value niche markets and both backward-and-forward vertical integration over the medium to longer term.
A review of recent years’ revenue streams reveals New Zealand and global wildstock fisheries are increasingly under threat from overfishing. Increased government regulation, in response to public concerns about the long-term sustainability of New Zealand fisheries, is also putting at risk the New Zealand and global fishing industries’ license to operate. Furthermore, climate change is the major elephant in the room no-one wants to confront.
In late 2019, I talked to leading NIWA Climate Scientist Dr. Mike Williams what the likely impacts on wildstock fisheries from climate change might be. His answer was quite stark – “I don’t know. The science simply hasn’t been done.”
In Te Arawa, we just can’t – and won’t – sit around and wait, as our shareholders are rightly demanding more from us today. More opportunities to grow our people, and especially opportunities to bring our rangatahi home. More in how we sustainably manage our moana, awa and other assets. And growing more economic wealth for reinvestment into our whanau and therefore grow our tikanga and culture.
Tactically, we are leading a large initiative with iwi Mataatua to investigate large-scale and smart aquaculture as a sustainable long-term supply of fish protein. We have a world-class team of technical experts scanning Aotearoa and around the globe to understand best practice aquaculture and bring it back in the next few months to help us orient possible new pathways. Alongside us are other iwi from across Aotearoa, Te Ohu Kaimoana, and the government through Ministry of Primary Industries.
We have partnered leading food science and technologists from University of Otago, University of Waikato, New Zealand Plant & Food, Cawthron Institute and NIWA to practically investigate new high-value products from waste streams to do both the laboratory and consumer research into new high-value products over the next 12 to 24 months.
Through Te Taumata, we are working to ensure interests of all iwi are embedded into free trade agreements with the rest of the world to remove high trade tariffs and subsidies that put us at a disadvantage from the rest of the world who we compete with. We are also actively engaged with Maori businesses to partner with Government to advance a new digital economic partnership agreement with Chile and Singapore to enable a smarter digitally enabled country-to-country trading platform.
Internally, we are embracing and embedding smart computing technology across our entire business. In the last six months, we switched to 100 percent digital governance, moved our data and information into the Cloud, and installing an online shopping platform across our retail business.
We were doing these things anyway, but COVID-19 has given us a healthy smack. Now we don’t have any choice!
Chris Karamea Insley
Chief Executive, Te Kotahitanga o Te Arawa
