Beachhead Conference - Auckland

I am traveling to Auckland first thing tomorrow to attend the NZTE Beachhead Conference.

Erica Crawford from Kim Crawford Wines and Mark Taylor from Metal forming Technologies will join Beachheads Chairs Bridget Liddell (Americas) and Eric Tracey (United Kingdom), Mahmoud Haidar (Middle East), Chuan Seng Lee (South East Asia) and Pradip Madhavji (India) to debate the individual challenges for New Zealand companies in their respective regions.

Greg Cross, Chair of the New Zealand Beachheads advisory board will act as MC for the proceedings and Economic Development Minister Pete Hodgson is expected to close the debate.

The panels will discuss how New Zealand companies have successfully increased their market shares offshore, are perceived by global competitors as key players, are going head to head with their competition on their own turf, and how they are increasingly taking over their competitors’ market share.

Given Pingar's own imminent UK market entry plans, the timing of the conference could not be better. I will catch up with members of the UK Beachhead Advisory Board who we presented to back in January in London. I blogged about that presentation here.

These events, by their nature, are usually uplifting and optimistic. It will therefore be interesting to see what impact current exchange rates have on the attendees perception of offshore expansion and engagement. Yesterday, the NZ$ climbed to its highest level in over 20 years against the US$. The NZ$ / GBP cross rate is now touching 41c. This is hurting, but does open up the possibility of more offshoring as companies seek to cut costs and get closer to their overseas markets. It is an interesting take and I expect, an interesting day ahead.