20
October 9, 2015 / The National Business Review
Special
Report
Spotlight on
Dunedin
The National Business Review / October 9, 2015
SPECIAL REPORT: SPOTLIGHT ON DUNEDIN 21
What does it mean
to win Gigatown?
Dunedin is still regarded as one of New Zealand’s most business friendly cities. It has important global connections making it a confident
commercial centre with strengths in education, health, design technology, food and natural products. But no city is an island. Dunedin is
the nerve centre of Central Otago, and the surrounding region boasts quality horticulture, agriculture, vineyards and much more. There’s
plenty of reasons for Dunedin to remain a strong and important business city.
Little by little, Dunedin
is starting to grow again
Duncan Bridgeman
Dunedin has taken some hard knocks over
the years but the city and surrounding region
has a soul that will never be punched out.
And while some of the old student lifestyles
may have changed in recent years, the university is still the centerpiece of Dunedin and
remains a breeding ground for business ideas,
innovation and technology.
But economic growth and creating new jobs
remains a challenge for its city council, business groups and commercial interests.
It is now two years since the city’s economic development strategy was unveiled in
partnership with the University of Otago, the
polytechnic, Ngai Tahu, Chamber of Commerce, Employers Association and the council. The target is to create 10,000 extra jobs
in Dunedin and increase average per capita
income by $10,000 in 10 years.
The strategy was released after a rash of
job losses, starting with Fisher & Paykel Appliances’ closure of its Mosgiel manufacturing
plant in 2008 and then further shocks such
as the downsizing of Dunedin’s Invermay
research centre.
The spin from the council is there has
been significant progress over the past two
years, something it backs up with the latest figures from Business and Economic
Research Ltd (Berl], which showed Dunedin’s
economy and employment grew in the year
to March 2014.
The figures show
tourism and the creative sectors are driving
growth. Gross domestic product grew by
2.2% in the year to
March 2014, which
was a higher rate of
growth than over the
DOUGAL MCGOWAN:
‘It’s really about doing
past decade.
a little a lot rather than
According to Berl,
a lot a little, so we are
there were an addigetting incremental
tional 1221 fulltime
change the whole time
equivalent jobs in
rather than just once
the year to March
a year’
2014, compared with
a year earlier. The next report for 2015 is due out later
this month and sentiment is improving ahead
of that.
This week the council released the results
of its residents’ opinion survey, showing a
boost in resident satisfaction with economic
growth and promotion this year.
“This is an area where the council has
been putting in a concerted effort,” says
mayor Dave Cull. “While there is still work to
be done, we’re delivering a little bit more on
that each year.”
If there’s one thing Dunedin councillors
are good at, it’s coming up with catchphrases
for initiatives.
These include the council’s “red carpet not
red tape” project, designed to support busi-
nesses through the regulatory process, Dunedin’s ‘’Night Sky City’’ concept supporting its
energy plan, and the Sexy Summer Jobs business internship programme, which featured a
speed-dating event between businesses and
students.
All these initiatives add to the strategy, says
Otago Chamber of Commerce chief executive
Dougal McGowan, who joined the chamber
in March.
One of the
things about
Dunedin
is people don’t like
to shout from the
treetops
– Dougal McGowan
“What we are trying to do is lead from the
front by being part of the decisionmaking
process. So we’re in all the subcommittees.
“It’s really about doing a little a lot rather
than a lot a little, so we are getting incremental change the whole time rather than just
once a year.”
Mr McGowan says the next Berl report
coming out later this month should see some
traction from the economic development
strategy. “We are hoping some of the data
will really highlight what’s coming out of the
Grow Dunedin Partnership, which is one of
the mechanisms to try to build that economic
development within the city.
“Dunedin has a vibrant technology area
but is still strong in the traditional stuff as well
with the university and hospital.”
He cites local companies such as agribusiness consulting company AbacusBio as leaders in their field.
“There is lots of really good research and
projects that come out of the university sector and into the incubator and the Audacious
business challenge.
“A lot of them take off really quickly and do
really well. And I think there’s more belief now
that they can get it done in Dunedin.”
Mr McGowan says the Sexy Summer Jobs
internship programme has been incredibly successful, with people ending up with
fulltime jobs and staying in Dunedin.
“They may move on, go on OE, but they
also come back, which is great.”
Has Dunedin made progress in attracting people? “I think there’s a lot of good new
leadership within the city. That has emphasis
and a drive and is creating a new vibe. Things
are definitely moving faster than they were,
but people have got to keep looking at the
positive.”
An emphasis on strengthening ties with
China is also starting to pay off, he says.
“One of the things about Dunedin is that
people don’t like to shout from the treetops.
What we do know is yes, there are contracts
that are gained out of it and there are beneficial relationships. The council plays a role in
opening doors.”
The next project the council is working on
is a new branding and marketing initiative,
with much of the focus work expected to be
completed by the end of the year.
Mr McGowan says the first step is working
out the “smell, taste and sound” of Dunedin
that will entice people to the city.
Chris Keall
I have to admit Chorus’ Gigatown
competition drove me a little crazy
as various towns, small cities and
suburbs competed for attention
on social media. And in the final
rounds, as more substantial proposals were put together by communities, I felt for Porirua whose
council spent $100,000 in its presentation only to miss out.
Still, moving right along,
Dunedin was eventually named
the winning Gigatown.
What does that mean in
practice?
First off, it means Dunedin
homes and businesses can get
“Gigatown” internet plans, or
superfast 1000 Megabit per second
or 1 Gigabit per second Ultrafast
Broadband (UFB) fibre connections for the same cost that most
of us pay for a mid to high-end
UFB plan that offers a tenth of
that speed (many Gigatown home
plans are in the $79 to $99 range).
The UFB is designed for a
top speed of 1Gbit/s, but at the
moment, and for some time to
come, residents in most areas
are restricted to a top speed of
100Mbit/s or 200Mbit/s.
Some see a 1Gbit/s connection as a little over-the-top for a
household connection. Even if you
have one family member mainlining Netflix, another internet
gaming and a third high-def video
conferencing, you’ll still be under
100Mbit/s. And here at NBR Tow-
ers in Auckland, we happily share a
100Mbit/s fibre connection among
30 staff. It’s mind-blowing stuff.
Dunedin homes can now get the
kind of internet speeds and bandwidth that only a couple of years
ago were only available to the likes
of Fonterra and other large companies.
Still, the Gigatown competition
helped focus attention on what
fibre can do for a community, and
its advantages over older copper (or DSL) connections. Those
include that fibre can run at full
speed in both directions (copper
plans are typically very slow for
uploads), doesn’t degrade with distance (a major problem with copper), is more reliable and doesn’t
suffer anything like the peak-time
Rebranding as GigCity
John Christie, who heads the
council-owned Enterprise
Dunedin, is driving the city’s
Gigatown initiatives.
He says the council spent
$100,000 on its Gigatown bid. It’s
also chipping in $250,000 of its
own money on Gigatown-related
projects this year. To that pot, you
can add the $500,000 the council
received for a Gigatown Development fund from Chorus, and
$200,000 for a Gigatown community grants fund from Chorus and
Alcatel-Lucent.
It’s still very early days for Mr
Christie’s Gigatown plans but the
first major initiative went live on
Wednesday: the GigCity Gigabit
Wi-Fi public network, initially
available around the Octagon,but
slated for expansion. It’s a joint
venture between the non-profit
Digital Community Trust, Chorus,
Dunedin City Council and Unifone, a Dunedin-based ISP.
It’s the first venture under the
city’s new GigCity branding.
Public wi-fi networks are nothing new but often speed is lousy,
or you have to pay for decent
bandwidth. Often there’s a poor
“backbone” or landline connection
between different wi-fi hotspots.
Dunedin’s GigCity network, on
SOUTH ISLAND | AUCKLAND
www.leighsconstruction.co.nz
the other hand, is free and offers
1 gigabit/s wireless internet. It’s
billed as the fastest free wi-fi network in the southern hemisphere.
And it can probably take planetwide honours in terms of the fastest free wi-fi network.
Funds for business and
community
A second major development is
the establishment of the GigCity
Community Fund. Applications
for grants of up to $20,000 open on
October 10 (if you’re a local, check
out www.gigcitydunedin.co.nz for
details).
Wicked Networks’ Stu
Flemming is already eying the
funding. The local ISP owner says
even at a knockdown Gigatown
price, many homes can’t afford a
UFB connection.
His plan is that if broadband
can’t be taken to the people, then
bring the people to the broadband.
He’s planning a series of community centres that will have 1 Gigabit/s
broadband on tap but also teach
coding and other computer and
internet-related skills, along with
fun stuff like robotics and drones.
Timely: Gigatown poster kids
Mr Christie says even during these
early months it has helped firms
Continued P26
GIGATOWN WRANGLER: John Christie, head of the Dunedin City Council-owned
Enterprise Dunedin is driving Gigatown-related initiatives
[email protected]
Excited about our
future in Otago
University of Otago | Science Precinct Laboratory Redevelopment
POSTER KIDS: A rare shot of the Timely Team, or at least many of them, in one room (co-founder and chief executive Ryan Baker
is standing at rear). The staff is usually spread around 25 different home offices, constantly using video conferencing over gigabit
fibre to keep in touch
congestion of copper.
DUNEDIN:
HOME TO NEW ZEALAND'S
BEST BROADBAND
22
October 9, 2015 / The National Business Review
SPECIAL REPORT: SPOTLIGHT ON DUNEDIN
and Otago Polytechnic lecturer
Margo Barton agrees Dunedin has an
abundance of “knowledge-hungry
students” heading to the city to study
their passions. “They’re the sorts of
people who are interested in ideas,
and obviously creativity is all about
ideas. A lot of people who study
in Dunedin will return after a few
years and start their own thing, or
work for somebody here. Even when
they’re not living here, they’ll always
be proud of their connection to the
quirky, romantic place that Dunedin
is,” she says.
MARGO BARTON:
Dunedinites can take time to
be creative
Arts and culture strategy
Dunedin’s
creative
sector back
on the rise
Chelsea Armitage
We can take
time to be
creative.
Everyone
mixes in
together
which means
there’s a lot of
collaboration
Margo Barton
Once home to the man who penned
New Zealand’s national anthem,
Dunedin is experiencing its largest
creative sector revival in more than a
decade.
Host to the world-renowned
iD Fashion Week, a thriving music
scene, and plenty of printers, publishers and artists, Dunedin is fast
becoming a go-to place for creatives
to live and work. The city’s creative
sector is showing signs of growth in
employment and GDP numbers,
after more than 10 years of steady
decline.
The South Island city was also
recently awarded the title of Unesco
City of Literature. It’s the first city in
New Zealand to win any of the Unit-
ed Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organisation’s creative
accolades.
Tertiary study key
The creation of tertiary qualifications in the creative and arts space is
contributing to the overall number of
jobs in the sector, according to some
of the city’s top artists.
Dunedin School of Art lecturer
Bridie Lonie says the country had five
art schools in 1995 and now has 25
but the country hasn’t grown at the
same rate.
Ms Lonie says new jobs won’t
just appear in the creative sector to
cater to the number of graduates, but
the alumni are more likely to create
their own. “The arts is an unusual
sector. It’s atypical because it doesn’t
obey the usual rules of supply and
demand. You’d think this country was
oversupplied with artists, but that
doesn’t stop people wanting to study
creative arts. In fact, more people
seem to want to do that,” Ms Lonie
says.
Dunedin Music strategic director Scott Muir says before a tertiary
degree in music came about in the
early 2000s, students were studying
to become doctors and lawyers and
dabbling in music on the side. “Once
the first cohorts graduated from the
music degree, people were choosing
to stay in Dunedin, running music
venues, music retail stores, and
cafés.”
iD Fashion Week co-chairwoman
THINK FORWARD.
THINK TOGETHER.
Your infrastructure specialist in
energy and environmental services.
The city’s creative sector could spur
further growth with the impending
release of a newly-developed arts and
culture strategy. The plan, developed
and implemented by Dunedin City
Council (DCC) and advocacy group
Transforming Dunedin, provides a
framework for leveraging the various
forms of arts and creativity in the city.
“The council consulted for about
five weeks last year right across
Dunedin on a draft version, and
FASHION WEEK: Renowned iD Fashion
Week is held in Dunedin annually
received a huge volume of responses
and lots of great ideas. The aim
is to foster collaborations locally,
nationally and internationally,” DCC
manager of arts and culture Bernie
Hawke says.
The finalised strategy is due
to launch on October 27, and will
feature four main themes: identity
pride, access and inclusion, creative
economy, and inspired connections. Mr Hawke wouldn’t reveal
much more ahead of the official
launch but seems confident it will
unify creative sector resources and
encourage collaboration and growth
in the city
Ms Lonie says Dunedin’s creative sector isn’t as connected as it
could be, and she hopes the strategy
will encourage more collaboration
between different creative projects.
“It’s such a small city but five really
interesting things might be going on
at the same time, which could lead to
an awful lot of clashes,” she says.
Creative breeding ground
In the year ended March 2014, Dunedin’s creative sector experienced an
8% growth in fulltime employment
figures from the year before, and a
2.2% rise in GDP. Arts and culture’s
contribution to Dunedin’s GDP
totalled $86 million, employing 1389
full time staff last year.
But why are these creative people
increasingly choosing Dunedin as
their stomping ground? Mr Muir says
his city of 130,000 is easier to navigate – in more ways than one – than
some of its more populated counterparts.
“It’s really easy to pick up a guitar
and go around to your friend’s house
when they’re only two blocks away.
Try doing that from Green Bay to the
North Shore in Auckland. The barriers are a lot harder in larger city, and
just the fact that Dunedin’s a liveable,
walkable city, makes creativity really
easy,” he says.
The city’s population also actively
involved itself in live music events,
and has a “much stronger” appreciation for talent than the rest of the
country, Mr Muir says. “I don’t know
how we can transfer that specifically
to dollars but people here are more
willing to spend money on creativity because that’s what drives us.”
This willingness to spend on cultural
events has encouraged some bigname artists to head to the chilly city
in recent years, with Fleetwood Mac
and Neil Diamond among the ranks.
Dr Barton says the relaxed
Dunedin lifestyle gives people more
time to be creative as they “don’t have
really busy lives doing other things.
“We can take time to be creative.
We’re not siloed either, so everyone
mixes in together which means
there’s a lot of collaboration. When
international emerging designers
come into Dunedin, they revitalise
the industry, and keep it vibrant.”
[email protected]
The National Business Review / October 9, 2015
New airline
set to bring
regions to
the south
Emerson Howitt
A frustration for many
Dunedin residents has
always been its air connectivity (or lack thereof).
Although the city is serviced by Jetstar and Air New
Zealand to the other main
centres, it’s severely lacking
in regional connections with
any smaller destinations only
available through stopovers
in other cities.
Most airlines have struggled to justify routes to a
city whose population has
fallen to below Tauranga
and Hamilton sizes. This has
been shown by the city losing
much of its Australia services
bar a few Brisbane flights.
However, the city’s deficiency in regional services
could change when a new air
service launches at the end of
the month.
Dunedin hedquarters
Kiwi Regional Airlines is
the brain child of Hamilton
councillor and entrepreneur Ewan Wilson, former
owner of the ill-fated Kiwi
Air in the mid-1990s.
The new airline will run
services between Dunedin,
Queenstown, Nelson and
Hamilton.
The airline has only one
CONNECTING
THE REGIONS:
A look at the
routes being
flown by Kiwi
Regional
Airlines
SPECIAL REPORT: SPOTLIGHT ON DUNEDIN 23
Fares are as low as $79
one-way to Queenstown and
Nelson, trips that would normally cost closer to $300 and
would involve a stopover in
Christchurch.
Mr Wilson says he’s made
a significant investment in
Dunedin and is adding about
50,000 new seats going into
the airport.
“Most people would agree
that, when you put that kind
of capacity into a city, it’s a
great enabler of economic
growth.”
“We’ve leased a building
down there for storing our
maintenance supplies. We’ve
put in place a lot of ground
handling equipment in
all our airports.”
He hopes to take
advantage of
the growing
cruise ship
market by
being able to
fly people to
Queenstown on
day trips from the
city.
“There are something like 70 odd cruise ships
going into Dunedin over the
next summer period and
there’s never really been an
ability for those getting off
the cruise ship to go see our
premier tourist destination.”
gateway for passengers from
cruise ships wanting to visit
Queenstown would benefit
the city greatly.
“Our most iconic scenery
is landlocked and making it
accessible to the cruise ship
market would be fantastic.”
He also hopes this sparks
further regional links to
Dunedin.
“Why can’t we start connections from Invercargill
into our network, so we
connect people to Dunedin
and to the rest of the world,”
he says. “If there’s a service
there and it’s robust and got
a good business case, then
any airline would want to
listen to that.”
The new air service is set
to launch on October 27.
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plane, a Turboprop SAAB 340
with 34 seats but it has plans
to add a second plane within
a year of service.
The plane will be stored in
a facility at Dunedin Airport.
The plane will start from
Dunedin in the morning and
fly to Queenstown and back
in the morning before flying from Dunedin to Nelson
and then on to Hamilton
before turning around and
going back along the same
route and doing another
Queenstown service in the
evening.
He says a lot of businesses
will also take advantage
of a much shorter route
between the two towns.
“Dunedin to Queenstown
is one of the longest driveable routes without an air service at just under three hours
in each direction” he says, “A
lot of corporates have offices
in both Queenstown and
Dunedin, so we felt that there
was a real niche market.”
Dunedin International
Airport chief executive Richard Roberts agrees, saying
opening up Dunedin as a
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24
October 9, 2015 / The National Business Review
SPECIAL REPORT: SPOTLIGHT ON DUNEDIN
The National Business Review / October 9, 2015
Creating high-value jobs for
young people is crucial, Ian
Taylor says
Nick Grant
Shining a light on Dunedin
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Ask Ian Taylor why Dunedin
is a great place to live and
work and he’s got an apposite anecdote at the ready.
“The other day I had a
problem with my wi-fi at
home. I finally got a guy from
Vodafone to ring me here
at work and he said, ‘I need
you to be at home by your
computer, can we arrange a
time?’
“I said, ‘Okay, sure, I’ve
got a couple of things to do
here, give me 10 minutes
and then call me back.’ And
he said, ‘What, it’s only going
to take you 10 minutes to get
home?’ ‘Yeah, easily.’
“So he rang me again 10
minutes later: ‘Are you at
home?’ ‘Yes, I am.’ ‘That’s
incredible!’
“I said, ‘No, what’s incredible is I drove home, realised
I’d forgotten something,
drove back to work, picked it
up and drove home again.’”
Mr Taylor chuckles at the
memory before driving his
point home.
“So here’s the thing,
here’s the vision – this guy
from Auckland going, ‘I don’t
believe it, you’ve just driven
home twice in 10 minutes
and the problem you have is
that your wi-fi is only delivering 250mb per second and
not 500mb, when my fastest
speed is 25mb?’
“Tied up in that little
moment is the future of our
country.”
Civic salesman
Mr Taylor – best known as
the founder and front man
GETTING SHIPSHAPE: During the Gigatown campaign ARL produced a video drawing a parallel between the “refrigerated highway to Britain”
opened by the ship Dunedin in 1882 and the opportunity winning the contest represented to its city namesake
From P24
TAILORED SOLUTIONS: Animation Research’s Ian Taylor
of Animation Research Limited (ARL) – has long been
an energetic booster for
Dunedin.
When I first interviewed
him in 1998 , eight years after
ARL’s establishment, he was
keen to frame its Dunedin
location as an advantage.
He insisted, for example,
that where the company
was based greatly contributed to the response to its
groundbreaking real-time
animation of America’s
Cup regattas (technology
inspired, he says, by him
saying to ARL’s boffins, “New
Zealand’s racing in this really
boring event. Do you think
you can develop something
to tell us who is in front?”).
“I think if someone living in Auckland had done
it, they wouldn’t have got
the same sort of reaction,”
he said, “because people in
Auckland are expected to do
that stuff.”
“It’s really neat, people
love it – they don’t know
we’re called Animation
Research, they just know
we’re those computer guys
from Dunedin. That’s how
they talk about it – ‘You’re
those guys from Dunedin’ –
so it’s a real plus from a marketing perspective.”
Back then Mr Taylor was
also keen to promote the
idea of Dunedin as the country’s coalmine canary.
“Look,” he said, “we’re
at the bottom end of the
New Zealand; New Zealand
is at the bottom end of
the world. It rolls up the
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country from here.
“Advertising agencies
started leaving this town
15-20 years ago and went to
Christchurch, now they’re
leaving there. Soon they’ll be
moving out of Auckland and
going to Sydney. The trend
was there to see here 20
years ago.
“You don’t sit here and
say, ‘How do we stop them
from going?’ because you
can’t. You say, ‘If that’s going
to happen, what’s around
the corner that we can use
that will enable us to stay
here?’
“If people decide they
want to live in New Zealand,
they have to start looking at
this kind of technology to
shorten the world, to just
knock that distance down.”
Future focused
In 1998 the technology he
was talking about – the
internet – was just hitting the
mainstream but he and the
ARL team had already been
embracing the opportunities
it offered for years.
The gigabit connectivity that’s one of the prizes
Dunedin has received thanks
to winning Chorus’ Gigatown competition [see p21]
will be another huge assist in
alleviating the tyranny of distance the southern city must
constantly battle.
Despite playing a key
role in helping galvanise
Dunedin to get in behind the
contest, however, Mr Taylor
believes the significant thing
about the win “isn’t about
the infrastructure, isn’t about
the power it gives – even
though it’s just phenomenal.
“It’s actually more about
what it said about our
future,” Mr Taylor says. “It’s
about changing the way we
think.
“It’s the chance to stop
shrugging our shoulders and
complaining about what
we’ve lost, and start thinking
about the really cool things
we have and how we have to
fight for them.”
A case in point is Duned-
in’s stadium. It is frequently
characterised as a financially
catastrophic white elephant
but Mr Taylor takes a significantly different view.
“It’s not a secret it’s
hard to make it work,” he
acknowledges. “But when
it does, it flies; it lifts the
city in ways that nothing
else can. We just have to
stop whinging about how
it’s going financially and go,
‘It’s here, so what can we do
with it that makes it a real
asset?’”
Not surprisingly, Mr Taylor has some ideas.
“It’s early stages but we’re
trying to get people to think
around this idea of a city
driven by technology. That
stadium is one of the assets
we can accelerate. It sits in
the middle of a university,
with a phys ed school, sports
institute and polytech.
“Imagine if we ‘Gigged’
it up and started to use it,
for example, for designing
sports analysis tools and as
a facility for a world class
R&D centre for things related
to sport, fitness, health and
wellbeing.
“How cool would it be
with the advent of ‘Gig-data’
to take an amazing but
underperforming asset like
the stadium and turn it into
something world class?”
Whole of country
approach
The future, Mr Taylor insists,
is “about how we create
high-value jobs for young
people” – and not just in
Dunedin.
“Dunedin’s like a whole
bunch of other places and
there are people who are
as passionate about those
places as I’ve been about
Dunedin.
“I think it’s really important that we don’t run these
regional campaigns where
we are trying to take jobs
away from Gisborne or
Hamilton or trying to outdo
Tauranga or Napier,” he says.
“The country’s too
small; we need to be working together and we need
an overview from central
SPECIAL REPORT: SPOTLIGHT ON DUNEDIN 25
government.
“There needs to be a
really well thought out plan
for the regions, otherwise
they’re just going to fizzle
away and die and everyone
will be crammed into
Auckland.”
Mr Taylor notes that at
the same time there has
been an apparently inexorable northward drift of
companies and citizens,
“technology has shifted us
in a whole other direction so
that theoretically we should
be able to live and work
where we choose.”
His proof of concept is
the America’s Cup mobile
app that ARL won an Emmy
for last year.
“It was the first app we
ever built and we didn’t have
all the skills internally that
we needed,” Mr Taylor says.
“So we had people working
on it in Dunedin, we found
a guy with a company in
Queenstown who was really
good at the IOS stuff, we had
two guys from Timaru, and
then we had our team in San
Francisco.
“Now, we never, ever, all
sat in the same room once
but we built an app that
went on to win an Emmy
award. So there’s an example
of how you can live and work
where you want.
“We should be focused
on this idea of being a country where people have the
opportunity to live in really
cool cities or towns that
aren’t dying.”
[email protected]
26
October 9, 2015 / The National Business Review
SPECIAL REPORT: SPOTLIGHT ON DUNEDIN
SUPPLIED CONTENT
Otago rates second in NZ universities
Nevil Gibson
Callaghan support
helps cystic fibrosis
researchers Breathe Easy
By Julia Chambers,
Callaghan Innovation
business innovation
adviser
Pharmaceutical startup
Breathe
Easy
Therapeutics is one of
those companies whose
goal is so profoundly
worthy, it’s impossible
not to wish them
success.
The company is
trialing medicine which it hopes will radically
improve the longevity and life quality for
sufferers of cystic fibrosis (CF).
Breathe Easy CEO Andrea Miller says the
company “imagines a day when those with CF
can just be busy living, and not worrying about
losing the battle to CF”.
The company is embarking on a critical
phase in the drug’s development, and Miller
credits Callaghan Innovation with helping get it
to this point.
“We’ve recently started a clinical trial of our
inhaled medicine - Citramel™.
“Citramel is a complete NZ story. It was
invented here, made here and is being trialed
here.”
The drug has already been used in
compassionate circumstances on patients
in New Zealand, with extremely encouraging
results.
Miller explains Callaghan Innovation’s
technology and product development team
helped get over a key hurdle.
“We were circling around an in-vitro testing
issue for some time. The Callaghan Innovation
Protein Science and Engineering team helped
us grip this area up and move forward. We
now believe that we are maximizing our in-vitro
testing program which should provide more in
depth data and results for our trial. That’s gold!”
As well as supporting the science behind
Citramel, and providing a Project Grant to
assist the development, Callaghan Innovation
also helped the business develop through
making strategic connections and building
networks.
“Having access to experts like our dedicated
business innovation adviser has effectively
given us an extra pair of eyes looking across
a range of strategic areas. Their experience
and advice means we’re linking to support,
networks and contacts that we need as we
move through our project steps.”
“This outside technical support really matters
and their experts are experienced and worldclass.”
Breathe Easy Therapeutics has plans to
expand, and has utilised Callaghan Innovation’s
Innovation IP course to help the start-up
manage intellectual property issues.
“We’re also evaluating a range of other
potential CF formulations and medical devices
to provide better tools for clinicians and
patients dealing with this chronic genetic
illness.
“With the assistance of Callaghan Innovation
we now have access to a much wider team of
skilled professionals supporting all areas of
our business, not only in the usual business
development areas, but also in the harder to
access technical areas.”
If high-quality, specialised technology and product
development would help your innovation take hold, call
Callaghan Innovation on 0800 422 552
The University of Otago
has been ranked 10th of
all Australasian universities for the quality of its
research in a new international league table.
US News & World
Report’s Best Global Universities Rankings also
confirms Otago’s second
placing in New Zealand in
three other international
lists.
This year, US News
expanded its ratings to 750
tertiary institutions, up
from 500 last year.
Unlike its US-specific
Best Colleges list, which
takes account of graduation rates and entry scores,
US News’ global version is
based purely on research
metrics as indexed by
Thomson Reuters.
The only other university in the top 10 Australasian grouping was
Auckland, in eighth place.
Overall, Auckland was
134th in the world and
Otago 270th equal.
Otago rated in the
world’s top 200 in six of
the 22 profiled disciplines
– biology and biochemistry (185), clinical medicine
(197), environment/ecolo-
gy (150), plant and animal
science (188), psychiatry/
psychology (109) and
social sciences and public
health (147).
Otago was top in New
Zealand in two of these,
environment/ecology and
social sciences and public
health.
Otago also moved up
in the 2015 Times Higher
Education World University Rankings from the
251-275 band last year to
the 201-250 band.
This followed a placing
of 173rd in the 2015 QS
Rankings and a placing
in the 201-300 band in
the 2015 ARWU Shanghai
Rankings.
“This year we have
been one of only two
New Zealand universities
to feature in all three of
these key international
rankings,” deputy vicechancellor (academic)
Professor Vernon Squire
says.
Dentistry at Otago
ranked eighth in the world
– the only subject area at
a New Zealand university
to make an international
top-10 – and psychology
ranked 31st in the QS subject-specific ranking.
[email protected]
What does it mean to win Gigatown?
From P21
already in Dunedin recruit and retain
staff.
One of the poster companies for
talking full advantage of Gigatown is
Ian Taylor’s Animation Research (see
P24).
Another is Timely, a maker of
cloud-based appointment-scheduling
software for hair salons, clinics, gyms
and the like. It’s also used by everyone
from music tutors to personal trainers
to (whisper it) members of the oldest
profession.
Chief executive and co-founder
Ryan Baker says his company now has
4000 customers in 70 countries. He
wants hundreds of thousands in quicktime, worldwide.
Timely was founded in Dunedin and
has 15 staff in the city, as well as nine in
Wellington and one in London.
The company has a very 21st century setup: all 25 staff work from home.
There is a central office but Mr Baker
says it’s more of a boardroom for occasional meetings. A lot of communication is done by video conferencing,
which Timely uses intensively, day in
and day out.
While you don’t need a fast fibre
connection to videoconference, the
Timely boss says quality was frequently
lousy. The advent of the UFB and gigabit connections means not just video
chat but all kinds of remote collaboration is now seamless.
Not perfect
Mr Baker notes only some of his staff
are covered by Gigatown so far, and
international connections can be a
bottleneck at times (an oddity of the
current government’s $2 billion spendup on fast internet infrastructure is that
only $15 million was made immediately available for bolstering international
connectivity).
Chorus is 53% of the way through its
UFB rollout in Dunedin (vs 54% of the
way through the project nationwide).
That’s ahead of most metro areas.
Crown Fibre Holdings figures released
earlier this week put Auckland at 39%
and Wellington at 35%). But it still
means for just under half the city, fibre
isn’t in reach yet. And among those
who can connect, only a modest 2300
homes and businesses have taken a 1
gigabit plan so far, close to a year since
the city won Gigatown.
Rollout will be accelerated
“We expect to see that figure really grow
in the next 12 months as we continue
our UFB build work in Dunedin,” Chorus chief commercial officer Tim Harris
says.
The UFB rollout is scheduled to be
completed in the city by 2019 but NBR
understands that deadline will soon be
brought forward.
Dunedin making use of gigabit ultrafast broadband.”
As an example he gives a local
branch of Cycle World, which has a
system for capturing a 3D image of a
customer on a test cycle to optimise
their setup. A 1Gigabit/s connection is
used to share the intensive app’s data
with the chain’s head office.
Mr Christie says the education and
health sectors are another point of
focus. The WellSouth Primary Health
TIM HARRIS: The Chorus chief commercial officer says the average sync speed in Dunedin is
41Mbit/s, compared to the national average of 18Mbit/s
“Otago now has the fastest average broadband speeds in the country
– almost double that of other centres
– which is a consequence of Dunedin
winning Gigatown and end users opting for the Gig. Our latest data shows
that the average sync speed in Dunedin
is 41Mbit/s, compared to the national
average of 18Mbit/s, Mr Harris says.
“And overall, UFB uptake in
Dunedin overall is amongst the highest
in New Zealand. In fact, UFB uptake
has more than doubled in Dunedin
during the last 12 months [21% as of
September].”
He adds, “We’ve handed out more
than $50,000 in grants for the Gig-Start
Fund for some really exciting initiatives
over UFB, with even more money to
be made available through the fund
in the coming months. It’s exciting to
see so many great ideas coming out of
Network is using a 1Gibt/s connection
to securely network 85 practices.
Expect to hear a lot from the GigCity
in the months ahead.
“We’ve been careful not to let the
cat out of the bag too early,” Mr Christie says. Enterprise Dunedin and other
parties involved have been careful to
get a coherent plan in place and everything working before making a lot of
noise.
But soon his agency will be spreading the word about his town’s low-cost,
superfast broadband, and how it can
help industries that are very dependent on the speed of internet, from
gaming to movie post-production.
He says he’s already aware of people
relocating to Dunedin simply because
it’s the Gigatown. He’s expecting that to
accelerate.
[email protected]