The Country 25/07/24: Fran O'Sullivan talks to Jamie Mackay

The Herald's business section has done a great Agribusiness and Trade report. NZME's Head of Business discusses two of her columns - Luxon dubbed NZ’s ‘salesman in chief’ and Doubling Kiwi exports to grow NZ’s wealth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I always enjoy catching up with people on the country

(00:02):
who are smarter than me, and that's probably most of
my guests. This woman certainly is Frano's Sullivan. She's enzed
me's senior business content boss. Is that your title, Fran,
I've got so many titles.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm a senior business commentator, but in relation to what
we're talking about, I'm executive editor of The Herald's business
reports as well.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Well, it's like talking to the people at Fontra. Everyone's
got a long wounded title. Anyhow, Fran, The Herald has
come out today and I've had lots of good comments
on this with your Agribusiness and Trade report and what
a concentrate if I can, on a couple of columns
that you've written. One is about lux and being dubbed
New Zealand's salesman in chief, and the other one is

(00:51):
about doubling Kiwi exports to grow New Zealand's wealth. Let's
start with lux and you were in Japan with him.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Was he impressive on the ground, Well, we did see
quite a bit of him, but also he was having
an amazing amount of meetings himself and partially he was
there to drive the new security relationship. I think on
one day he had twenty seven meetings. I mean, he
was just that flat out. But along the way he

(01:19):
was present talking the talk at the F and B exposed.
They had a big move out to Costco to look
at the barers and what's happening there and a range
of things. You know, Kiwi Fruit Global lunched a new
health program that Setsbury is you know, sharp end off
and he does do that job pretty well. You know,

(01:42):
he did get dubbed the chief marketing officer both the
business guys and or I think he preferred salesman in chief.
So you know, it's just another facet of him that
you don't really see if you're here in New Zealand.
And there's a lot of cynicism out there about some
of these trips. A lot of the reportage tends to

(02:03):
focus on what goes wrong rather than what goes right.
And I'm not really in the camp that wants to
focus on the negativity because I actually want to see
this country grow.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, good on you. And you can say what you
want about Luxe and but he's an energizer, bunny, I'll
give him that. He seems to have boundless energy. Look.
One of the interesting stats and I think we talked
about this with Sesbury a couple of weeks ago on
the show. Japan has some of the lowest consumption of
fresh fruit globally. And another stat came out that one

(02:33):
in three adults in Japan suffer from malnutrition. Surely that
can't be right.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, well, this is interesting and I think it is right.
There was some very good research done also by New
Zealand Trade and Enterprise for this mission, and it was
very granular. It talked about that, it talked about the opportunities,
you know, increase in the number of people who for instance,
a single, single member family. So you know, it's sort

(03:02):
of like if you're thinking about the changes in Japan
and you're in New Zealand F and B exporter, you
need to be thinking about how do you drive new
market share with new products. And I think what tends
to happen is everyone gets bogged down and say where
the cynicism comes from, talking about, for instance, has been

(03:22):
a mature market when you're seeing which it is. It's
our fourth largest, But there's plenty of scope there given
the changes that are actually happening within the within the
actual environment, and you know it's sort of how do
you package up things for how do you address the

(03:43):
new nutritional deficiencies? What do you do about how do
you package I mean, they have exquisite packaging, but they
waste a lot of food and they waste a lot
of packaging. So there's lessons in there and the work
that ENZTA and their advisory people doing, I think this
first class. And to get an opportunity to see that

(04:03):
on the mission.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Hey, your second column, I'm running out of time to
talk about it, and people can go to the Herald website,
the business section and read all about this is about
doubling Kiwi exports to grow New Zealand's wealth. But I
note right at the end of that column, fran O'Sullivan,
you talked about something we're all talking about at the moment,
and this is the Trump risk strategy. If he imposes

(04:26):
a ten percent tariff on everything that's imported to the
United States. They are our second biggest primary industry export.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Market, correct, Yeah, and that is actually a risk. I mean,
if that ten percent tariff gets put on, you know,
across the board, it will have an impact on our
exporters in F and B and that's a market which
has been growing. You know, obviously companies like doing tounships
in market, and everybody who is big and thinking in

(04:59):
this area, thinking what is their strategy if we do
get a Trump presidency, how do they manage it? Thinking
about it at the government level, but also at the
company level, so you know, part of it also diversification.
We talk about putting a not too in the eggs
or all eggs in China basket. You get a Trump presidency,

(05:19):
you want to navigate that one carefully as well. But
at the same time, probably there's a good reason for
the government pushing into a lot of other new markets
as well, and also trying to make additional you know,
whether fair weather in places like Japan, Singapore, elsewhere where
there is a demand for a high specialized food.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Hey fran O Sullivan, thanks for your time, excellent publication
in the Herald, the Agribusiness and Trade Report. I can't
even remember your title, but it's always good to chat
to you on the country.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Just call me fran see your you