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Photo: Supplied by Karikaas The market has never been tougher for a boutique cheesemaker, says Karikaas owner Di Hawkins. Di and Alan Hawkins have been making cheese out of their Loburn factory since 2004, when they bought the Karikaas cheese business from Dutch transplants Karin and Rients Rypma. Their Dutch and New Zealand cheeses have won many awards - including this year where they took out prizes for best Dutch cheese and best NZ original cheese. But after 20 years in the business, the market has never been tougher, she said. "Over that time the entrants to the New Zealand cheese market who've come and gone are probably 10 to one to those that have survived. "People come and they get started, and there's lots of enthusiasm, and then the reality and the work and combination of circu...

By Ian Verrender, ABC chief business correspondent Photo: RNZ Analysis - You have to hand it to the Kiwis. For such a tiny nation, stuck at the bottom of the South Pacific, it's a country that punches well above its weight. Take last Saturday night, for example, when the All Blacks yet again walloped the Wallabies in Wellington, keeping the elusive Bledisloe Cup locked away in the NZRU trophy cabinet. For Australia, it's been a 22-year drought. It's not just sport. A range of musicians, writers, filmmakers, artists and actors from the Land of the Long White Cloud strut the world stage. But there's another, perhaps more arcane, area where New Zealand has made the rest of the world sit up and take notice. When it comes to central banks, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) is somet...

Gisborne businesses are struggling, with many on the brink of closure. Shop owners told RNZ they have seen a huge reduction in the number of people in their stores, which is being driven by several factors including a decline in forestry and lower export prices for meat and timber. There have been job losses, with unemployment rising 1.2 percent and the region's GDP falling by 0.3 percent. Even though Gisborne's construction consents are up 40.8 percent due to the cyclone rebuild, its residents say the money is not evident in the local economy Forestry makes up 32 percent of the region's tradeable activity, but forestry harvesting has already ground to a halt in some areas of Tairawhiti - part of the fallout after the district was hit by devastating cyclones Hale and Gabrielle last year. ...

Photo: Google Maps Energy production could return to Marsden Point, with the operator of the fuel import terminal signing a conditional agreement to develop a biorefinery at the site. Channel Infrastructure said the agreement with Seadra Energy and a consortium of partners, meant the proposed biorefinery could become an anchor tenant for the Marsden Point precinct, with Channel selling a number of former refinery assets and leasing out land. The consortium included Qantas, Renova Inc, Kent Plc and ANZ. A biorefinery typically converts biomass into biofuels, biochemicals and energy, similar to an oil refinery, but using renewable biological materials. Seadra had initially signed a deal to buy decommissioned hydrocracking assets from Channel for US$33.88 million last year, with the intenti...