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The success of the High Performance Work Initiative (HPWI), driven by Business Hawke’s Bay, is extending to include food and beverage businesses this year.

Lyn Cheyne, the recently appointed food network facilitator, will be spending the next month talking with those businesses who are interested in the project. 

Following successes with the High Performance Work Initiative in the engineering sector in 2012, Senior Advisor to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Grant Duffy, recommended Hawke’s Bay as a positive example to other regions of how the initiative achieves real results. 

Lyn says she hopes to see the same successes within the value-added food processing sector that has been achieved with engineering firms.

“We feel improving the productivity, profitable returns and bottom line for a number of established enterprises will lift regional food sector growth overall. It takes real commitment and drive to improve current operations.”

Business improvement specialist, Glenn Manahi says every business involved in the 2012 HPWI project has made considerable improvements.

 “Each in their own way, some more focused on process and procedures and others more focused on internal organisation, attitudes and behaviours but  the improvements achieved, have most certainly been beyond their original expectation.”

Lyn feels the same significant benefits can be achieved within the Hawke’s Bay food and beverage sector and assist businesses to overcome any perceived barriers to growth.

  “One of our key aims is to enable, through the project, the development of more, or new, commercially viable value added food products”. 

The 2013 High Performance Work Initiative is delivered by Business Hawke’s Bay in partnership with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. 

Any food and beverage businesses wishing to register interest for the 2013 HPWI should contact Lyn Cheyne, Business Hawke’s Bay at [email protected] or Vicki Berkahn at the Hastings District Council [email protected]