Last year, the Leadership Group set a goal to quadruple Canterbury’s aerospace industry to a $1 billion sector supporting more than 1500 jobs by 2035.

The strategy also calls for Canterbury to become a global research and investment hub for the space sector, to achieve net-zero emissions for aerospace companies, and for the traditionally white male-dominated sector to reach 20% Māori and Pacific peoples workforce representation.

Research carried out in 2023 found the Canterbury aerospace sector contributed around $250 million to the region’s economy and employed around 500, ChristchurchNZ aerospace cluster lead Emma Renowden said.

Adams said the sector had been growing at 8% to 9% a year and that the aerospace strategy would accelerate that clip. She saw its targets being hit “slightly before” its target date.

“There are really good signals. We’ve seen Kea Aerospace raise $17.5m and move into a new facility as part of their expansion and Dawn Aerospace’s US$25m raise,” says Adams.

Nearly $6m worth of jobs were added to the Canterbury economy by the aerospace sector last year, she says.

Why choose aerospace as one of ChristchurchNZ’s key points of focus?

“We need a challenge that’s globally scalable,” Adams says. “It’s big enough to go, but not so big it’s unrealistic. You also need something that makes a sector uniquely sticky to Christchurch. For aerospace, it’s things like the dark skies and the test bed facilities.”

Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre, jointly run by the Government and two local Māori rūnanga, Te Taumutu Rūnanga and Wairewa Rūnanga in a 50:50 commercial partnership, features a 1km sealed runway that opened in 2024, plus a hangar, that is used by Dawn Aerospace and Kea Aerospace for test flights of their un-crewed aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Around $30m had been spent on Tāwhaki (MBIE breaks it down as $16m in 2021 for purchase of the land at Kaitorete, $8m in 2022 to support operating costs for Tāwhaki and $5.4m in 2024 for runway upgrade and support buildings).

There’s also a network effect. Kea and Dawn’s presence has attracted smaller aerospace start-ups, and provided business for firms in related sectors, such as cryogenics company Fabrum.

The $1b plan calls for better promotion and better co-ordination between various local aerospace companies, the council, the University of Canterbury, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s The NZ Story and central government.

Can Canterbury attract more aerospace players of, say, Dawn’s scale?

“We’re more than hopeful. We’re optimistic,” Adams says.

“We’re big enough to be globally significant, but small enough everybody to know everybody and work well together. That’s Christchurch’s secret sauce and it’s not easy to replicate in bigger places.”

Medical tourism opportunity

Adams says Christchurch is the only New Zealand city with an aerospace strategy.

But it’s not her agency’s only area of focus.

Health tech is another. Here, a signature development is BioOra’s new CAR-T cell immunotherapy manufacturing facility, which is due to open within Christchurch’s Te Papa Hauora Health Precinct (a joint venture between Health New Zealand, the University of Canterbury, the University of Otago and the Ara Institute of Canturbury), which will open on October 7.

Born out of research at Wellington’s Malaghan Institute (which remains a key partner), BioOra’s Christchurch facility will support the delivery of next-generation CAR-T cell immunotherapy, a highly personalised cancer treatment that uses a patient’s own immune cells. It targets blood cancers such as lymphoma and leukemia.

“One of the most exciting things is that their treatment is cheaper has fewer side effects than other treatments, which makes it easier to administer,” Adams says.

“You can do it as an outpatient, which opens it up to a really interesting medical tourism opportunity.”

NZ Trade and Enterprise alum and ex-Icehouse chairman David Downs – who would later work closely with Malaghan in advocacy and fundraising – had to go offshore for life-saving CAR-T cell treatment. By year’s end, BioOra is aiming to have 60 local patients in clinical trials.

The facility has the potential to generate around $98 million in annual GDP for New Zealand, based on treating approximately 500 patients per year.

Adams said BioOra’s decision to locate in Christchurch reflected confidence in the city’s innovation ecosystem.

“There are lots of things that brought them here. The fact that we’ve got the health precinct; the fact that we’ve got an international airport just 20 minutes from the city, the fact that we’ve got the University of Canterbury, Lincoln University, University of Otago, and ARA here that can all help to provide the skills for what they need.

“But we still needed to work really closely with them to make sure they got the right local partners, the delivery partners, and investment partners to be able to set up.”

Then there’s cleantech, where Adams namechecks Zethos (formerly Zincovery), a Canterbury University research spin-off, founded by Jonathan Ring and Prof Aaron Marshall, which opened a $6 million demonstrator plant in April. The facility takes a waste product, steel mill dust (from partner NZ Steel) and produces zinc and copper – both materials in short supply amid the data centre boom.

The start-up’s funding has come from a mix of Crown funding (via Callaghan Innovation, now absorbed into MBIE) plus venture capital firms including Icehouse Ventures, Motion Capital and Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1.

The 2500sq m facility, opened by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, is a proving-ground at this point. Once Zethos transitions to commercial production, the plant will recover around 1000 tonnes of zinc and copper per year, and employ around 60.

UC’s ‘strong partnership’ with local businesses

ChristchurchNZ’s memorandum of understanding with the University of Canterbury has been a key part of its strategy.

“We work to both inform industry and be informed by industry,” says the university’s deputy vice-chancellor Prof Catherine Moran (who will take the reins as vice-chancellor in February). “There’s a really strong partnership.”

“Our vice-chancellor, Cheryl de la Rey, and Clare Murray the director of our Centre for Employability and Career Development just held a workshop with Business Canterbury to find out what’s industry looking for, what are we offering, and how can we be an even stronger part of that.”

An online short course on regulatory economics was co-designed with lines company Orion. “It’s aimed primarily at people who are already working and don’t have time to come and sit on campus. It’s been highly popular. It was a demand industry had. It was a gap in the education system.”

A student studying for a mechanical engineering degree can minor in aerospace engineering. The university also offers a master’s degree in aerospace engineering.

“Aerospace students do a lot of their final-year projects with Kea Aerospace, Dawn Aerospace or even Air New Zealand.”

Engineering students have summer placements at firms like HamiltonJet, Trimble, Tait and Fabrum, while the big engineering firms also bankroll scholarships. Tait is also partnering with the university for the Response Ready Disrupt challenge on the last weekend of this month, which will give students from multiple disciplines the chance to win $3000 as they’re asked to respond to critical event scenarios.

The rise of AI has fuelled more industry co-operation. The university’s data science students are suddenly in hot demand for placements.

As ChatGPT first broke into the mainstream, “One of our law professors, Ursula Cheer, did a review with a number of law practices across the country to ask, ‘Will you be using AI? How? Should our students be coming out knowing how to use AI for law?’ and 95% said ‘Absolutely.’”

It was a similar story for the business school, says Moran.

“So we mapped a whole program of AI development that ranges from understanding the ethics of AI to applying AI to critiquing AI.

“I like to think our students will come out leading the way to the future, but also informed by industry who are also pushing the future.”

Tesla battery boss trades Texas for Christchurch

What draws a start-up to the Garden City?

“As a thriving hub for innovation and industrial growth, Christchurch provides the ideal foundation to scale our operations and expand our network across New Zealand,” says Antoine Riboulon, chief operating officer for smart home battery maker Aotea Energy – which launched its smart home battery for homes in Auckland and Christchurch this week.

Before an 18-month career break, which brought him to New Zealand, Riboulon spent five years working on energy products for Tesla in California and Texas, rising to global head of operations for Tesla Autobidder – the firm’s energy trading and control system for its utility-scale batteries.

Those skills should come in handy at his gig, given Aotea’s locally designed and assembled $10,500-$12,500 home battery (which doesn’t require solar), comes with an app that, among other smarts, lets you buy power at the cheapest times of the day, then sell it back to the grid at peaks.

The start-up, backed by Sir Stephen Tindall and Vaughan Fergusson, was founded in 2022 by Tama Toki, who learned about energy resilience growing up on grid-less Great Barrier. Toki is based in Auckland.

Riboulon will oversee manufacturing expansion from the firm’s Christchurch plant.

“Having spent nearly a decade building global energy storage systems, I joined Aotea Energy because it offers the single biggest opportunity to transform New Zealand’s power grid,” he says.

Global leader in hydrogen

As well as drawing new tech companies, Christchurch has seen established players expand.

As the world experiments with liquid hydrogen as a new clean energy, Christchurch-based Fabrum, founded by Christopher Boyle (managing director) and Hugh Reynolds (technical director) has been involved in projects around the world, from Australia’s largest liquid hydrogen storage and refuelling site for a Fortescue mine site in Western Australia to a hydrogen fuelling station for trucking firm HW Richardson in Invercargill (due to come online before year’s end) to various airline and airport pilots in the UK to an Airbus and Fortescue-backed facility at Christchurch Airport’s Kōwhai Park energy precinct for creating gaseous or liquid hydrogen on demand for test projects.

In 2023, surging interest in hydrogen saw Fabrum raise $23 million in venture capital in a raise led by London’s AP Ventures and supported by Fortescue and Japan’s Obayashi.

The funds were used to expand manufacturing and to double staff numbers to around 70.

Boyle, who grew up in various towns around the North Island, co-founded the company now known as Fabrum in 2004.

The firm initially focused on cryogenic cooling and superconducting storage systems, which require extremely cold temperatures (up to -273C, aka 0 Kelvin) to operate, then expanded into the related area of hydrogen liquefaction infrastructure, where constant, extremely low temperatures must also be maintained.

Why set up show in Christchurch?

Boyle and Reynolds both did engineering degrees at the University of Canterbury.

“I was cognisant of the fact that when I finished my degree, a number of my cohort headed offshore for jobs. Hugh and I were really clear that we wanted to try and leverage Canterbury’s high-tech manufacturing history, and create a pathway for students to stay local but contribute innovation technology globally.”

Referring to HamiltonJet and Tait Communications, Boyle says, “There’s this rich history of technology development and development, so you’ve got clusters of capability, an ecosystem of highly capable entities that can support you on your path.

“You’ve got this really deep technical and innovative business cluster, which is heavily leveraged off engineering capability, which is aligned to the university’s really strong engineering school.

“You’ve got the ability to work at a global level and contribute to real change around the world, live in an environment where you can be in the hills and the mountains and the rivers, the sea, etc, within less than an hour and a half in any direction.

“Christchurch is a really great choice when you talk about living and building your life. It’s a great place to work. It’s an exceptional place to live. It’s probably one of the best hidden gems of the Southern Hemisphere.”

Why stay in Christchurch?

“We’ve had the US and the UK try to entice us. And there is definitely going to be a day when we’ll do some of our manufacturing offshore, simply because it makes sense as you scale. We might set up a secondary base.

“But our R&D activity and core manufacturing will stay here. Some of our core strengths are off the back of our connections with the university and other Canterbury-based technology groups and suppliers. We choose to be here. Christchurch is a core part of our DNA,” Boyle says

Boyle says his firm takes on Canterbury University engineering students as cadets over summer. “We try to give them really clear industrial engagement to support the practical and professional hours that they require for their degrees,” he says.

Less obviously, Fabrum also works with marketing students, and uses others to help research offshore markets.

Kea Aerospace helps smaller firms follow in its footsteps

Established tech firms are also giving back by taking start-ups under their wing.

Mark Rocket cut his aerospace teeth as the seed investor and co-director of Rocket Lab in the 2000s. In November 2009, he and founder Sir Peter Beck launched a miniature rocket, the Ātea-1, from the Sir Michael Fay-owned Great Mercury Island (it reached the Karman Line or the edge of space 100km up before going missing, despite local fishing boats being roped into the search. “Coromandel, we have a problem,” this reporter headlined a story at the time).

Rocket Lab went on to thrive in Auckland and expand into the US, “But I was also keen to see a thriving aerospace industry emerge here in my home city, Ōtautahi Christchurch. So during 2017, I started to research potential pathways to achieve this,” Rocket says.

“Christchurch is New Zealand’s second-largest manufacturing hub, has relatively low air traffic, and has many other factors favouring aerospace development.

“There’s a potential future where Christchurch is the home to hundreds of aerospace companies and thousands of aerospace jobs. The city is a gateway to the Antarctic; Christchurch could also be a gateway to space.”

With co-founder Philipp Sueltrop, Rocket created Kea Aerospace, which is developing the Atmos, an unmanned aerial vehicle the size of a hang glider, designed to fly on solar power for weeks of aerial photography, marine surveillance and other applications.

One of Kea’s prototypes – the Atmos Mark I – achieved its first stratospheric test flight in February last year after launching from the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre south of Christchurch, taking photos from 17,000m (a distance that Rocket pitches as allowing much higher resolution pictures than a satellite, and much cheaper than a plane).

In June, on the back of a $17.5m capital raise, Kea moved into a new, 3000sq m manufacturing centre and mission control building.

It was an upsizing required to accommodate the in-the-works Atmos Mark II, which will have a 35m wingspan to the Mark I’s 12.5m. The larger wingspan will allow for more solar panels, allowing the Mk II to stay aloft for weeks – or even months – at a time.

The site includes land for future expansion, with capacity to develop a large-scale manufacturing plant capable of producing “dozens of aircraft and ultimately hundreds for customers around the world”, Rocket said.

The Burnside building also includes an aerospace hub, or space to house aerospace start-ups.

One of the first to take up the offer is the Auckland-founded Astrix Astronautics, which is developing a system of inflatable solar cells for satellites and numbers Beck among its backers.

The hub forms part of the Christchurch City Council’s development agency ChristchurchNZ’s new Business Landing Pad initiative, designed to help innovative companies explore opportunities, establish a presence and accelerate growth in Ōtautahi.

It’s no coincidence that Rocket (born Mark Stevens) would host the aerospace hub.

Rocket has fostered the local industry since his return to the city, becoming the founding president of Aerospace Christchurch – now Aerospace New Zealand – which hosts the annual Aerospace Summit that has become a fixture at Te Pae since 2022, the year the new convention centre opened for business.

Air Vice-Marshal Darryn Webb and other RNZAF brass were on hand for the opening of Kea’s Burnside building.

Rocket says the Air Force is a prospective Kea Aerospace customer for border protection, including maritime surveillance for illegal fishing and drug smuggling. The Government recently said it would be buying local drones under its new $300m defence capability plan to boost new defence tech.

“The relationship between the air force and Kea is long and strong,” Webb said, with the Wigram Aerodrome made available for early Atmos testing. He hoped Kea could participate in an upcoming tender for persistent maritime surveillance. Defence forces worldwide had to work with the private sector, Webb said.

“The Defence Force has a need to enhance our own maritime surveillance,” Webb said.

“The Persistence Surveillance Air Project has entered the early request for information phase, seeking market feedback on uncrewed systems able to operate 1400 nautical miles from base for up to six hours, delivering high-definition imaging in near real time by day or by night.”

Forestry, precision agriculture and search and rescue are other areas that can utilise the Atmos Mark 2, Rocket said. His pitch is that it flies much lower than satellites, allowing for high-resolution photos and video, is cheaper than an aeroplane or helicopter, and can fly for weeks, rather than a drone’s minutes.

Dawn Aerospace fuels up, makes second spaceplane deal

Dawn Aerospace, which raised $42m at a $348m valuation, is Canterbury’s largest aerospace player, and the biggest in New Zealand outside of Rocket Lab.

The firm was co-founded in 2017 by Waikato-raised brothers James Powell (who studied mechanical engineering at Canterbury University) and Stefan Powell, a one-time Rocket Lab intern who moved to the Netherlands to study aerospace engineering at the Delft University of Technology, where he worked on a project with three fellow students who would also become Dawn co-founders: Jeroen Wink, Tobias Knop and Robert Werner.

The firm set up its operational headquarters in Christchurch, but also maintains a facility in Delft.

Dawn is best-known for its Aurora “spaceplane” – an uncrewed, remotely controlled aerial vehicle.

In June last year, it announced its first Aurora sale. The Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority picked up one of the spaceplanes for US$17m ($27.6m).

Last week it revealed its second Aurora deal. Californian firm Astral Materials will use one of Dawn’s spaceplanes for microgravity experiments as it develops cutting-edge new materials for making computer chips

Dawn’s second major line of business has been propulsion systems, which now power more than 50 satellites.

A signature feature is that the Kiwi-Dutch company’s systems are fuelled by a combination of nitrous oxide and propene, billed as a cleaner, safer alternative to the widely used hydrazine.

“When we first backed Dawn, the company consisted of founders working out of a garage with a radio-controlled model aircraft,” Icehouse Ventures partner Barnaby Marshall said.

“Today Dawn has more than 140 staff, tens of millions in annual revenue, hundreds of operating units in orbit – and a supersonic aircraft.”

Now the firm is developing a third major line of business. And once again, it’s not bandwagon jumping but developing a whole new field: A system for refuelling satellites in orbit.

Today, when a satellite runs out of fuel for its thrusters, it falls out of the sky – typically after three to five years for a low-Earth orbit design (thrusters are used to adjust a satellite’s orbit, while solar-powered reaction wheels are often used for finer tweaks to altitude, or the direction a satellite is facing).

Dawn is working on a reusable Space Utility Vehicle (SUV) that will dock with a satellite and deliver propellant, plus a network of Orbital Propellant Depots (OPDs or “disposable dumb tanks”) that are launched “opportunistically” whenever a rocket has spare capacity.

One SUV will carry enough propellant to refuel 50 to 60 satellites. In practical terms, that means one $1m Dawn launch could save $100 by extending satellites’ lifespans.

More fuel also means satellites could make more adjustments, enabling them to fly at just 300km overhead or roughly twice as close as today’s low-Earth orbit satellites, Powell says.

That will mean the ability to swoop below space junk, deliver faster satellite internet and take higher resolution photos.

HamiltonJet: The grand-daddy that’s growing faster than ever

Christchurch’s oldest high-tech firm has been going through a growth spurt recently.

The Sir Bill Hamilton-founded HamiltonJet has manufactured in Christchurch since the 1950s.

It’s financials are kept close, but chief executive Ben Reed says, “For the past eight years, our growth has averaged around 11% per year.”

The company is in the process of kitting out a 7500sq m expansion of its Christchurch factory, taking the facility’s total footprint to 22,500sq m.

(You might have seen the Prime Minister Christopher touring it recently without realising it. Reports carried close-ups of the PM’s face as he fielded questions about a possible leadership challenge.)

A new office area on the same site will be opened in the new year.

Reed says the firm has taken on 30 staff over the past few months, taking its Christchurch complement to 410 (including satellite offices overseas, the firm employs 480).

It’s best known in the popular mind for its jet boats, which can spin thrill-seeking tourists around in a river just inches deep.

The still family-owned firm now makes vessels up to 80m long.

Here, it’s been in the news for the propulsion systems it made for Auckland’s Transport’s two 300-passenger hybrid-electric ferries (made by Wanganui’s Q-West) and two 200-passenger fully electric ferries.

“Electric vessels are a fascinating niche,” says Reed. “We’re really thrilled to be involved with them. They’re great showcases, but they’re still sub-1% of our business.

“New Zealand is a small market for us as 97% of our business is exports.

“Defence is probably our biggest single segment but it’s closely followed by offshore energy; boats that service and inspect oil and gas rigs and offshore wind turbines.

“Ferries are another reasonable segment for us, and then you get into things like pilot boats and fishing boats and fire boats; anything that needs to be very manoeuvrable or go very fast or in shallow water; those are the general things that bring people to water jets.”

Family ownership has allowed for stable long-term planning, Reed says.

Why keep manufacturing in the city?

“The family philosophy is that the business was built to employ people in Christchurch and make use of the Kiwi ingenuity.”

The family maintains majority control.

“I work for the grandson of the founder,” Reed says, referring to director Mike Hamilton, while his son, hydrodynamic engineer Sam Hamilton is in the business, and “will be one day be chairman of the board”.

There are also other reasons to stay local. “We’re a pretty low-volume, high variety product,” Reed says. The company’s waterjets range from 270kW to large 5500kW models. That means there are no economies of scale to be gained from manufacturing in China.

“We run a very good lean production system here. It’s very smart and makes a very good job of building a high variety of different product sizes and configurations. New Zealand is not a low-cost country, but it’s also not a high-cost country either.”

It seems to be working. Reed says HamiltonJet has around half the market in a sector where there are 10 waterjet makers worldwide.

Jade goes MADCAP

Global operator Jade, which grew out of the firm founded by Kiwi tech legend Sir Gil Simpson, is Christchurch’s most established software firm.

Its core business has been its Jade platform or “software for making software”, which was joined by its ThirdEye platform – which automates financial crime detection and helps companies grapple with complicated anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulations.

The latter has been an engine of growth recently, as AI has both fuelled new threats and been deployed by Jade to counter them, chief executive Justin Mercer says.

In November last year, it entered dairy supply chain management by buying another Christchurch-based software firm, Contec Group, maker of the “MADCAP” (Milk Analysis, Data Capture & Processing) platform used by six of the world’s largest global dairy processors.

The deal took privately-held Jade’s headcount to 300 as it took on all of Contec’s 50 staff and will add 20-25% per year to its revenue (which grew 9% to $49m last year).

MADCAP – which built its dairy software on Jade’s platform – numbers Fonterra, Nestle, Synlait, Cadbury, Mondelez and Bega among its clients.

Mercer says the acquisition is enabling Jade to expand its work in agriculture and grow new export opportunities.

The chief executive sees three big advantages to being headquartered in Christchurch.

One is his firm’s close relationship with the University of Canterbury, which goes two ways – UC supplies interns and graduates and is also a Jade customer. Jade also supports the ShadowTech programme that matches secondary school-aged girls with local tech firms for workplace tours and activities to help bolster and diversify the next generation of tech talent.

The second is that, “We find the Canterbury business network very open to sharing. Perhaps because it’s smaller, it actually has more cross representation across industries, and therefore there’s quite a lot of cross pollination of ideas and just generally a more willingness to open up and help each other.”

The third is that in a world of increasing volatility, “New Zealand has a really unique position we’ve carved out in the world as a bit of a safe harbour; a neutral trusted brand. From a technology perspective, we see that as a huge advantage.”

Life on Mars

MARS Bioimaging personifies Christchurch’s growing medtech scene.

In January, the firm said it had raised $15m to take its portable CT scanner to the market.

That was followed up by the start-up gaining US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in March. It’s now assembling a US sales team, which will be based in New York (it has around 20 in Christchurch).

MARS will formally launch in the US on September 17 at a trade show in Boston, its chief executive Ojas Mahapatra says.

In August, MARS made its first local sale as Christchurch-based Reform Radiology bought one of its scanners. “They’ve been a longstanding research partner, so it’s good to convert that to a commercial relationship,” Mahapatra says.

Mars’ CT scanner, designed for hand and wrist injuries, can be easily rolled to an emergency department or wherever else it’s needed, Mahapatra says.

That compares to traditional CT scanners, which weigh 2-3 tonnes and are anchored to a specific hospital room.

Costs are under wraps, but the Herald understands MARS’ scanner costs around US$500,000, compared to the US$3m-$5m for a full-size model.

Mahapatra said another point of difference is that its portable model emits 5% of the radiation of a traditional CT scanner.

“You can safely sit beside it and sip a cup of coffee.”

The Medipix X-ray detector at the heart of the Christchurch company’s CT scanner was developed for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider – the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.

Canterbury physics professor Phil Butler saw the Medipix chip’s X-ray potential and secured worldwide exclusive rights to its use in biomedical small animal and medical imaging.

Butler, who today bills himself as “mostly retired”, is on MARS’ board, while his son Anthony Butler, a professor of radiology at the University of Otago, is the company’s chief technology officer.

In an example of the Christchurch network or cluster effect, Mahapatra joined MARS from Fabrum to drive the commercialisation of the academics’ product.

A rubbish idea

University of Canterbury research has been spun-out into a number of start-ups, including the aforementioned Mars Bioimaging, Zethos, plus Syft, a maker of air-quality sensors.

Now an early-stage firm called Enagain, founded by Dr Matthew Cowan and Dr Gavin Hedley (both with the university’s engineering school), is seeking to commercialise the pair’s work on biogas, with $2.5m via a seed round led by Motion Capital.

Landfills produce biogas when organic waste breaks down without oxygen.

A proprietary process developed by Cowan and Hedley turns that biogas into renewable natural gas (RNG), which the pair say is chemically identical to fossil natural gas. It’ll be suitable for use in heavy industry, particularly high-heat processes.

The company is initially targeting small landfills, where the volumes are too low to justify the capital cost of existing systems. Operators of those sites typically flare the gas off at their own expense rather than create an income stream from it.

Enagain’s modular low cost system offers these landfills an income stream. By lowering the cost of upgrading biogas, the company is aiming to turn a stranded waste stream into a usable local.

“Gavin and I are acutely aware of the challenging energy landscape facing industrial gas users in New Zealand and overseas,” Cowan said.

“By redirecting methane emissions that would otherwise be wasted, Enagain provides a stable, affordable supply of renewable gas to businesses that cannot feasibly electrify. That’s a win for businesses, a win for energy security, and a win for the environment.”

Tait: Staying in Christchurch means staying agile

Like HamiltonJet, Tait Communications is a Christchurch veteran, but growing faster than ever before.

The maker of radio communications gear, founded by Sir Angus Tait in 1969, was named Company of the Year at the 2026 Hi-Tech Awards.

“While Tait was founded 57 years ago, the company continues to innovate on the global stage and move at speed – not an easy achievement for such a well-established company,” the panel of international judges said.

“Tait is coming off a phenomenal year, passing the half-billion-dollar revenue mark,” the judges added.

“It grew organically and by acquisition, expanding into new countries and introduced technically advanced new products, and it competes strongly on the world stage.”

The company has had a focus on keeping manufacturing local at its sprawling Christchurch campus.

Its biggest growth spurt in recent times came over 2023 and 2024 as revenue jumped from $421.6m to $426.6m on Tait’s acquisition of distressed Australian player RFI.

In 2025, Tait made a net profit of $44.1m on $516m revenue.

It remains the city’s largest high-tech employer, with around 700 local staff.

“Our founder Sir Angus Tait’s vision was to create an industry rather than a business. Today, Tait Communications continues to do this and is committed to growing future engineering and technical talent in Christchurch and New Zealand,” chief executive Yoram Benit says.

Tait mentors students through a summer internship programme and partners with Canterbury education providers to build capability in the industry.

“The upcoming UC Response Ready Disrupt Challenge is one of these initiatives that lets students understand the real-world challenges Tait’s customers face, while empowering them to come up with innovative solutions that keep people, communities and organisations safe – just as our staff do every day,” Benit says.

Tait is a strong exporter-led business with over 85% of revenues being global, the chief executive said.

“Fifteen per cent of our revenue is reinvested in Research and Development, so we can continue to innovate for our global public safety, law enforcement, transportation and utilities customers. Our customers rely on our interoperable technology to keep them connected when failure is not an option.”

“Tait is committed to Christchurch. The majority of Tait’s products are made in our manufacturing facility here, which sets the company apart. Having engineering, research and development, design, and manufacturing located on one campus allows us to be agile and better serve our customers.

“Tait has the largest dedicated electronics assembly plant in New Zealand, the biggest surface mount technology (SMT) environment in the Southern Hemisphere, and our campus environment allows for rapid prototyping and manufacturability iteration.”

Two challenges remain

“Christchurch has built real momentum over recent years. We are seeing growing confidence, increased investment, a stronger international profile and an economy that continues to diversify and evolve,” Adams says.

“But cities go in cycles. We can’t rest on our laurels.”

A couple of challenges remain. One is inherent, the other tied to a change in central Government policy, she says.

“One is scale. We can’t compete on scale. We just can’t. We’re never going to be the richest. We’re never going to be the largest,’ Adams says. “But there are other levers we can pull.”

For example, last year then-Space Minister Judith Collins announced that the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre, west of Banks Peninsula, would be given Permanent Special Use Airspace approval from the Civil Aviation Authority – allowing Tāwhaki to manage the entry, exit and operations of aircraft in the area and, at times, designate it a Restricted Airspace, rather than having to constantly re-apply for permission.

The other challenge centres on the tension between the Beehive and local Government.

“With rates capping coming in and some of the local government reform, I think it’s going to be hard for economic development to remain well-funded,” Adams says.

“That will be a challenge across the country.”

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.