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Covid-19

  1. Fill out your arrivals card and declare or dispose any at risk goods

For many of us it’s been quite some time since we’ve had to fill out an arrivals card. This declaration form is just as important now as it was pre-pandemic so make sure you bring a pen so you can fill it out on the plane and have it ready to go upon landing. Remember to declare all goods that pose a biosecurity risk including food, plants, wooden products, soil, water, outdoor equipment, and animal products. If in doubt, declare or dispose of them in the amnesty bins provided throughout your pathway on arrival! And remember this includes food or snacks that you may have put aside on the plane! Don’t let the apple your child put into your carry-on turn into a $400 fine. 

  1. Avoid bringing at risk goods if at all possible

Think twice about bringing home at-risk goods at the moment. Queues at the airport may be longer due to all the pandemic protocols in place. Having to declare your goods may add a significant amount of time to your arrival. Think twice about the items you need to declare, do you really need to bring them home this time? Or can they wait until a later visit?

  1. Collect your Welcome Home pack quickly

All travellers eligible to bypass MIQ will receive a welcome pack from biosecurity staff. This pack contains your rapid-antigen tests and all you need to know about them including how to report your results and stay safe from COVID-19 while in New Zealand. Please ensure everyone you are travelling with collects a pack. Please avoid asking biosecurity staff any health related or testing questions, they are not medical staff and you will only hold up the queue for yourself and others. If you have more questions after reading the information in the pack, please visit the Unite Against Covid-19 website.  

  1. Don’t stop for the detector dogs

The cutest response to New Zealand’s biosecurity network is the team of highly trained detector dogs who check the bags of incoming passengers from planes and boats. When the dog approaches you it’s important to keep walking, the dog will check your bag as you move. You only need to stop if the dog handler asks you to, otherwise you risk slowing down yourself and others behind you. It’s also important to remember that while these dogs may look cute they are working animals. Please avoid trying to pat or touch them. This is especially important to explain to children. If you would like to talk to your kids about the dogs and the important role they play, plus watch a video with the cute new trainees see the Biosecurity New Zealand website. 

  1. Be kind

For many of our offshore community finally arriving back into New Zealand will be highly emotional. We have never in our lives had a situation where we have been unable to travel back and forth to see family and friends. Almost all of us have missed important events over the past two years, and getting through the airport at the end of a trip is always the most frustrating part. Biosecurity staff are just doing their jobs, please follow all procedures and have everything ready for staff to check. Dispose of any at risk items in the bins provided to avoid getting a fine, and be patient with staff who are working as fast as they can to process everyone. Please remember biosecurity staff are people too, the last two years have been hard on them as well and we are all looking forward to things getting back to some sort of normal. 


For more information on returning to New Zealand including vaccine passports, travelling around NZ and Covid testing centres take a look at our list of official website links here.

A key focus for New Zealand in 2022 is to refresh and strengthen our global trade relationships, and to not only reconnect our country to the world but also the world to Aotearoa. And it is here that our offshore and returning Kiwi community should play a vital role. 

One million Kiwi live offshore. This community offers New Zealand an incredible resource of skills, knowledge, connections and experience. Harnessing the power and inspiration of this community is key to ensuring a smooth and successful recovery and navigating the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead as we work to re-energise our economy and show our trading partners we remain competitive on the world stage. 

Research shows 18% or almost a fifth of Kiwi live offshore, many of them in countries which are several months further down the track with their opening up strategies. These Kiwi have already navigated various reopening challenges and are keen to share this knowledge particularly with the business community. The recent discovery of the Covid Omicron strain is a timely reminder that the pandemic situation will continue to shift and evolve. This is yet another reminder of the huge potential to be gained from learning from the ongoing experiences of this community. 

Ganesh Nana, Chair of the New Zealand Productivity Commission – Te Kōmihana Whai Hua o Aotearoa, recently urged New Zealand to “be proactive in ensuring the distinctive skills, knowledge, experience, and connections of our offshore and returning Kiwi community are used to lift innovation, productivity, and the wellbeing of all in Aotearoa.”

Utilising the power of a country’s offshore community or diaspora, is not a new phenomenon. In fact many countries around the world are actively engaging in research on how best to leverage this growing opportunity.

The International Organisation for Migration predicts that over the next decade, governments, multilateral organizations and corporations will be drawn to the diaspora sector, with investment in it growing substantially. The sector will be seen as a “whole-of-government” issue that needs time, attention and resources. 

IOM spokesperson for Asia and the Pacific, Itayi Viriri, says diasporas have a huge potential for leading sustainable development in their countries of origin and this potential is often most evident in island nations with large diaspora communities such as New Zealand. 

“Members of a diaspora can help open doors for their country of origin politically, through public diplomacy and economically, through nostalgic trade and their own commercial activities. These opportunities would otherwise be difficult for the country to achieve due to limited visibility on the international stage, lack of connectivity due to geographic remoteness, and/or limited resources for formal diplomatic or trade promotion activities. This bridging role of diaspora communities is an invaluable resource for countries of origin, however it cannot be assumed as a given. Institutions in the country of origin must work to build and maintain the trust of their offshore community who may easily feel neglected or disconnected if there is a lack of proactive outreach.”

Across the world we can see inspiring examples of how connecting with a country’s offshore community has a positive impact on the growth and development of a nation. 

For example, the Institute for International Economics found that Koreans living in the United States have generated an increase of trade between the two countries by around 15-20%. 

The Korean Government considers offshore communities to be valuable sources of global talent and potential investment. By leveraging its overseas population with an eye towards enhancing national economic competitiveness, Korea trades more with countries where a larger number of ethnic Koreans reside. In 2017, more than 600 small and medium-sized companies in Korea signed deals with Korean entrepreneurs living overseas to further enhance Korea’s economic profile.

Further research this time into offshore Indian communities in the US further supports this economic advancement theory. Indians living and working in Silicon Valley in California, showed  27% regularly exchanged information on jobs or business opportunities and technology with people back in India. 46% had been a contact for domestic Indian business and 23% had invested their own money into Indian start-ups. 

There is no reason why New Zealand shouldn’t be able to harness similar benefits from our offshore community. Our Kea Future Aspirations Survey showed 25% of Kea’s offshore community are interested in being a brand ambassador for New Zealand, 18% are interested in New Zealand board and advisory positions and 17% are interested in giving time and mentorship to NZ businesses. The opportunities that this community presents are there for the taking. 

As we look ahead to 2022 and focus on reconnecting with the world we must make sure that we are not wasting an opportunity to harness the power of our offshore community. Next year will represent a key turning point in our battle against Covid and it is vital that we all work together to ensure the best outcomes for the productivity of all Aotearoa. 

Kāhore taku toa i te toa takitahi, he toa takitini – we cannot succeed without the support of those around us.

If you’d like to enlist the ideas, experience and networks of our offshore Kiwi to support your business, get in touch with Kea and let’s engage more of our global explorers for a more productive New Zealand. 

CONTRIBUTOR

Toni Truslove

Kea Global CEO

Kea New Zealand

Kea member

COMING HOME?

Join

Join the Kea community, NZ’s online home for returning Kiwis.

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Resources

We’re here to support returning Kiwi. Here’s our list of resources to help you plan your return and next steps.

READ MORE

Jobs

Looking for a new role in New Zealand? Visit the Kea job portal and find your next career opportunity.

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New Zealand needs to ‘work smarter, not harder’ is the implication – and an injection of smart, skilled, internationally experienced Kiwi and their capital could certainly help New Zealand improve this statistic.

But that opportunity currently hangs in the balance as thousands of talented offshore Kiwi reassess their place in the world, and if there is a better life for them ‘back home’.

The Kea Future Aspirations Survey of offshore Kiwi and those recently returned, suggests a large group of these global citizens still plan to return, but the landscape is rapidly changing.

Takutai Atrium

Sir Peter Gluckman recently said, “The window of opportunity for New Zealand to attract talent is evaporating as the developed world becomes vaccinated. Other countries, like Singapore, have moved swiftly, turning Covid-19 into opportunities to their advantage. 

“Start-up and scale-up are very different, and scale-up requires globally orientated expertise we are short in – we need to work with these returning Kiwis or risk being left behind,” he said.

A key issue for returning Kiwi is satisfactory employment.  While local businesses talk about skill shortages and a desperate need to attract international talent, our Kiwi explorers are expressing a growing disillusionment about the return home, with an issue of feeling valued front and foremost.

In fact, there is a significant mismatch between what Kiwi employers say they are offering and the experience of returnees. 

On the positive side, the report shows that 64% of Kiwi businesses are proactively seeking internationally experienced Kiwi to fill positions.

Yet, while 46% of businesses indicate international experience is highly desired and a plus, only 38% of returnees expect local businesses to fully understand and value their overseas experience.

And while local employers suggest that returnee wage expectations are too high, returnees say they’ve already discounted themselves to meet the market.

In fact, 52% of returnees indicate that they expect to earn less, or significantly less, in New Zealand – a financial set-back, coming on top of the many issues of getting through MIQ, finding somewhere to live, getting visas for partners, school for kids and more.

The ongoing call for the careful opening of borders to allow more skilled migrants essential to business and exporters, is getting louder by the day.  NZTech CEO Graeme Muller said recently there could be as many as 10,000 open tech roles in the market this month alone. Are we missing the opportunity to engage Kiwi who have, or are about to return home?

It seems that New Zealand employers are underestimating the total package that internationally trained and skilled expats present. 

Ganesh Nana, Chair of the New Zealand Productivity Commission Te Kōmihana Whai Hua o Aotearoa recently commented that: “Internationally experienced Kiwi contribute to Aotearoa through distinctive skills, knowledge, and connections that can help lift innovation and the governance of our businesses and industries. 

“We should look to capitalise on the strengths of returning and offshore Kiwis to deliver productivity lift and improvements to the wellbeing of all New Zealanders,” Nana said.

However, returnees are only half the story. The offshore Kiwi community is telling us they want to proactively contribute to New Zealand’s post-Covid recovery and ongoing success – if we give them the opportunity. The Kea report shows that of the 59% of Kiwi choosing to remain offshore, half of these are wanting to contribute to New Zealand in some meaningful way – with 18% of these interested in board and advisory positions. Their understanding of international business, the latest in technology, business processes and importantly their networks all serve to give our businesses a distinct advantage – if utilised!

The race is now on – with other nations starting to emerge from lockdown, vaccinating their populations and opening borders, the post-Covid talent grab has begun. 

With New Zealand having one of the highest offshore populations in the OECD, the time is now if we are to take the opportunity to leverage their skills, knowledge and networks.

So, more needs to be done – urgently – to engage with our most talented Kiwi explorers whether they are remaining offshore or coming home, to help them with the hurdles they face and to properly value their skills and experience for the benefit of all. 

This means as a nation we must recognise the value of our offshore population and better factor their potential into our planning and policy decisions.

It should also include: 

  • Closing the gap between returning kiwi and employers – encouraging employers to see the longer term, bigger picture implications of employing, valuing and retaining internationally experienced and skilled talent.
  • Looking further afield for board appointments, advisory positions, hard to fill roles or investment with our offshore Kiwi a great place start. A gift from the COVID-era is a new appreciation for distance working, let’s set this in motion.
  • Recognising that while the world’s borders remain closed now, the Post-Covid era will come, and with it, new opportunities and a need for fresh ideas and capital. Let’s foster our relationships with offshore Kiwi now and plan to be part of that future.

At Kea, we engage with our offshore and returning Kiwi every day. We field constant emails offering support and connection, we match offshore Kiwi with those on the ground who need them and we celebrate every successful integration we participate in.  

If you’d like to enlist the ideas, experience and networks of our offshore Kiwi to support your business, get in touch with Kea and let’s engage more of our global explorers for a more productive New Zealand. 

Click here to access the full #KeaFutureAspirations report

CONTRIBUTOR

Toni Truslove

CEO

Kea New Zealand

Kea member

COMING HOME?

Join

Join the Kea community, NZ’s online home for returning Kiwis.

READ MORE

Resources

We’re here to support returning Kiwi. Here’s our list of resources to help you plan your return and next steps.

READ MORE

Jobs

Looking for a new role in New Zealand? Visit the Kea job portal and find your next career opportunity.

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PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Borders May Close – Minds Need Not

As a Kiwi who lived offshore for almost eight years, I relished the opportunity to build on my New Zealand based skills and perspectives. 
Operating a digital business in a highly competitive market sharpened my ability to understand audience behaviour. It taught me how to use data to drive strategy, ways to develop alternate revenue streams and importantly, how to lead teams through change.
I was beyond excited at the prospect of bringing these, often hard-learned skills home to Aotearoa to see how I might be able to help grow a company on the soil where I grew up.  

Rude awakening

Arriving home four years ago, however, proved to be a rude awakening.
I was told by more than one recruiter that my skills were irrelevant in NZ, that I should be ready to halve my salary and hope to work my way back into a leadership position over the coming years. 

This is my story, but it is also the story of so many Kiwi returning home.  
We are a passionate nation, proud of what we achieve collectively. 
We love to see companies like Xero and RocketLab on the world stage. 
Yet we are also more than a little unwelcoming of tall poppies, particularly if they come in the form of Kiwi returning home. 
For some reason we feel a sense of abandonment that they left us, and more than a dash of incredulity that in a reality-shifting moment like a global pandemic, they would want to be home amongst family, familiar faces and places. 
As a small island nation on the edge of the globe we have learnt to be self-reliant and to build things our way.
Our response to the covid-19 pandemic was also purpose-built to make the most of our natural maritime border.  

Risk of closed minds

But I sense that in the current moment we are at risk of closing our minds, as well as our borders. 
As a country we need more high value innovative companies like Soul Machines and Seequent, we need to increase our frontier firms and our productivity. 
Part of this could be achieved through driving diversity of thought and including not only cultural differences from amongst our resident population, but also the different perspectives gleaned from our whānau offshore and recently returned.
In my work with Kea, I have seen the breadth and depth of passionate thought leadership and experience within our offshore network. 
These unique global Kiwi deliver innovation in a wide range of industries, for other nations. What might it take for NZ to open our mind to what they have to offer us?  
With the country riding high in global brand perception, we have more global Kiwi than ever wanting to support the country they are so proud of – through the talent or investment of those who choose to return, or the ideas and perspectives of those who remain offshore.

Carpe Kiwi

It is up to us as a community to navigate the solution, grabbing on to the amazing opportunity that exists.
On my return to Aotearoa, I had some soul searching to do. 
I needed to rethink my skill set and find the right terms of reference to appeal to a New Zealand-based company. 
Importantly, I had to find the right way to integrate myself into its team and culture. 
Returning Kiwi would do well to do the same.
But an enormous opportunity also exists for NZ to be open to new ideas and to find ways to amplify returning Kiwi skills that might not sit in a job description. 
We need to lose the fear of being told there’s another way of doing things and be ready to embrace healthy challenges to the status quo – the impact could be far-reaching.

Open minds

While it may take a few years to improve cost of living, housing and traffic issues, the one thing every one of us can do right now, is to open our minds.
We are the employers, the policy makers, the community and the whānau who can welcome these valuable Kiwi back home.
 And for a group who largely made the call to give up their lives to return to the familiar, this emotional support could go an awfully long way to securing their ongoing loyalty and value.

CONTRIBUTOR

Toni Truslove

CEO

Kea New Zealand

Kea member

COMING HOME?

Join

Join the Kea community, NZ’s online home for returning Kiwis.

READ MORE

Resources

We’re here to support returning Kiwi. Here’s our list of resources to help you plan your return and next steps.

READ MORE

Jobs

Looking for a new role in New Zealand? Visit the Kea job portal and find your next career opportunity.

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Sea freight continues to be a challenge for both exports and imports, exacerbated by the hold up of an estimated USD9.6B goods per day during the stranding of the Ever Given mega-container ship in the Suez Canal and the critical shortage of refrigerated containers affecting food exporters. Earlier this year import delays at Ports of Auckland and the Chinese New Year holiday period further impacted retailers and manufacturers alike. 

To safeguard New Zealand’s international connectivity Transport Minister Michael Wood announced last month the extension of support for the aviation sector to the end of October 2021, with the possibility to extend further to March 2022.

“Airfreight capacity is at 90 per cent of pre-COVID levels thanks to the International Airfreight Capacity (IAFC) scheme, which has meant our exporters have been able to get their products to market and time-critical goods like medicine have been able to come into New Zealand.

“The scheme has also maintained a critical lifeline for our Pacific partners – there would have been no flights to Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands and Niue without it.”

The original IAFC was allocated $372M of the $600M aviation relief package to support airfreight continuity. The extension of the scheme to October 2021 is estimated to be worth an additional $170M.  

From April 2021 IAFC has a name change to Maintaining International Air Connectivity (MAIC), to more clearly reflect the focus on recovery and its broadened objectives.

  • retain air connectivity with New Zealand’s principal trading partners,
  • enable continued essential passenger movements,
  • retain important air connections to the Pacific,
  • retain air connections to key routes and hubs important for tourism recovery,
  • maintain core capability, capacity and competitiveness within the New Zealand aviation sector to provide a platform for an efficient and competitive market when international air travel recovers.

Since May 2020 the IAFC scheme has:

  • Enabled over 6000 flights
  • carried over 120,000 tonnes of air freight
  • worth $8 billion and
  • returned over 60,000 people to New Zealand
  • who made up around 60% of all MIQ stays. 

NZTE Focus customers may be eligible for a Supply Chain Review advisory service. Talk to your NZTE Customer Manager for more information.

For more information read Beehive release, Ministry of Transport announcement and MFAT’s report, The Importance of the Suez Canal to Global Trade.

CONTRIBUTOR

Saya Wahrlich

Global Director Government & Industry

Kea New Zealand

Kea member

HOW KEA CAN HELP YOUR BUSINESS GROW

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Tell us a bit about your background. How did you end up in London?

I have spent a great deal of my working life in food and hospitality. Cooking and baking have always been part of my life and from a very young age I was in the kitchen getting involved. As with many people who work in the hospitality business I am passionate about feeding people great food and creating experiences and memories through food and drink. I owned my first food business in Wellington when I was 21 years old which was a delicatessen and catering company. We made everything in the store from pate to bread. I decided to sell that business to come over to the UK and arrived here in 1997. With a couple of friends from NZ  and chef Peter Gordon we created Gourmet Burger Kitchen which went pretty well and grew in to a large chain of restaurants. Later on I opened Kopapa in London with Peter & Michael McGrath. 

What is the story behind Crosstown Doughnuts?

Like most Kiwis I am big fan of a great quality coffee. I had wanted to do something with coffee when I was approached by a young Australian guy called JP Then. He was looking to do something different in the coffee space in London. I didn’t want our food to be the same as what everyone else was doing and so we settled on the idea we would do artisan doughnuts with our coffee. We now have 12 shops and sell them in Harrods, Whole Foods and deliver them fresh all over the UK everyday.  JP and I are huge fans of online ordering and we have created a software company called Slerp which is the platform base for our online business at Crosstown. 

Covid-19 saw many businesses, especially in hospitality, have to pivot their offerings. Can you talk a bit to what you and the team at Crosstown have done?

Crosstown has been extremely lucky that we have managed keep our business intact during the pandemic. London has been extremely badly hit. As the first lockdown approached we could see panic buying starting at supermarkets. Other people in the hospitality trade were also seeing their businesses disappear in front of their face. So I contacted the guy who supplied all our milk and a friend of mine who had a large bakery and created the Crosstown Collective. The demand  just exploded and for the next 3 months we delivered fruit & veg, milk bread and doughnuts. Our customers were incredible and our staff were even more amazing. We had the technology, the space and the logistics to serve hundreds of people across London on a daily basis. 

What were your motivations behind starting ‘Operation Doughnation’?

A couple of years ago I floated the idea to JP about this program to support emergency services. It came to mind after a terrorist event here in London. When the pandemic started the whole country could see the pressure that the NHS and emergency services were under. We could see from the way that our customers were buying that our doughnuts were giving them a break from this really bad situation our country was in. So as is so often the case, JP and our team was able to pull the technology together and get the logistics organised to get food parcels and doughnuts to these people in need. The UK are such a generous nation and we were able to create a channel to enable them to give these amazing NHS staff a moment away from the madness. 

On a personal level, as someone who is staying in the UK, what are you most hopeful for in 2021?

On a personal level I want to see my children get back to school! Home schooling is one of the hardest things we have ever done. Children have zero understanding of production efficiency. The main thing for us to do is to navigate the next 12 months and ensure that having got this far we don’t fall on the home straight. I have been very proud to keep our teams at Crosstown and Slerp all working and even growing which is testament to the great people we have working at both companies. As I look around the hospitality trade in London it has just been destroyed and so many people have lost great businesses through absolutely no fault of their own. We are some of the lucky ones. 

How has running a business changed for you over the past 12 months?

Crosstown is now a better business than it was. A crisis forces you to focus like never before. 50% of our business is now online. We have added two new lines in cookies and ice cream at Crosstown. Both are going great. We also now offer National Delivery 5 days a week and that has opened up huge opportunities to us.  At Slerp we completed a funding round and have now laid the ground for that business to keep growing in to 2021 and beyond. 

What’s next for Crosstown?

Crosstown will continue to innovate with new products which is really exciting. We have partnered with a couple of large corporations that approached us to develop new lines with them which is exciting. And it is highly likely that Crosstown will open its first overseas territory in late 2021 or early 2022. So some exciting things happening. 

CONTRIBUTOR

Adam Wills

Co-founder

Crosstown Doughnuts

World Class New Zealander

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