Business

File pic Photo: Sorin Gheorghita for Unsplash A Hamilton dairy company has been fined $420,000 for using false claims on its packaging. Milkio Foods Limited had descriptions like '100 per cent Pure New Zealand' and 'from the clean green pasture based dairy farms in New Zealand' on its ghee products - despite using butter imported from India. It also used false and incomplete information to retain approval to use the FernMark logo - a trusted symbol to identify products made in New Zealand. The Commerce Commission was referred the case by the Ministry for Primary Industries and charged Milkio with 15 breaches of the Fair Trading Act. The company pleaded guilty to the charges. When handing down the sentence Judge Thomas Ingram emphasised the significant damage the misrepresentations could...

Parents say some children need melatonin to get to sleep. Photo: Quin Tauetau/RNZ To get the prescription-only sleep medication melatonin for her 10-year-old daughter, Fern, a mother in Wellington, has to jump through a few hoops. First, she finds an online retailer overseas that will ship to New Zealand. These are becoming less and less common as Medsafe works to prevent international retailers like iHerb from selling melatonin to Kiwis. Then, the package needs to get through customs undetected so she only orders one bottle at a time. Fern's most recent package - a bottle with 150 cherry-flavour pills, each containing 5mg of melatonin - arrived safely two weeks ago. Her family's acute sleep needs are sorted for the next few month. "She is thriving everywhere in life except sleep and yo...

[sMethanex uses 40 percent of the country's gas supply. NZ needs a plan in case it leaves, experts say. The Methanex plant in Waitara Valley. Photo: Google maps The country's current power supply crisis has highlighted the role of the biggest gas user, Methanex, which uses 40 percent of the country's supply. The Taranaki methanol plant is shutting until the end of October and selling its gas to Contact Energy and Genesis. Like Tiwai Point aluminum smelter in Southland, the methanol plants are a legacy of Think Big, the Government programme which built infrastructure and factories with taxpayer funding. The Methanex plants were built to produce the petrochemical methanol for export, taking advantage of Taranaki's offshore gas fossil fields. With gas supplies running low, energy expert...

(File image) Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone A door installation company has been ordered to pay more than $200,000 after a pastor was crushed to death by a roller door at her West Auckland church. Pastor Helen Verry, 44, died at Church Unlimited in Glendene on 30 January, 2022 after being seriously injured by the collapse of a 273kg powered roller grille door. Verry was the youngest of 15 children. One of her brothers was former All Black Va'aiga Tuigamala, who died less than a month after Verry, at the age of 52. Following her death, the company that installed the door back in 2009, Scotty Doors, was charged by WorkSafe under the Health and Safety Employment Act 1992. A similar failure now would have harsher penalties due to the Health and Safety at Work Act of 2015, WorkSafe said. Last...

Lake Pukaki Photo: Susan Rebergen Meridian believes it's increasingly unlikely generators will have to dip into the water supply reserves in the hydro lakes. Power supplies and prices are under threat because of low lake levels. But Transpower is making it easier for generators to access reserves in some lakes from next month. On Thursday, it announced generators can take more water from lakes Pūkaki, Tekapo (Takapō) and Hāwea during September and October if needed, to help stave off an electricity shortage. Meridian spokesperson Chris Ewers said there has been some welcome rain over the past week and more is forecast. He said Meridian also has six wind farms that regularly provide 25 percent of power it needs and higher winds are also forecast. Ewers added the company is reasonably con...

The historic Tui Brewery building in Mangatainoka. Photo: RNZ / Denise Garland The iconic Tui brewery in the Tararua township of Mangatainoka is no longer producing any beer, after more than 130 years. Beer has been brewed at the Mangatainoka site since 1889. DB Breweries, which owns the Tui brand, made the decision to close the main production plant in 2015, but installed a smaller, modern brewery in order to continue to supply its taproom and local community with specialty brews. But Marketing Director at DB Breweries, Fraser Shrimpton, has now confirmed it stopped brewing at Mangatainoka three years ago. "The [Covid-19] pandemic restrictions through 2020 and 2021 largely prevented DB from operating the brewery and we shifted the remainder of this production to our Timaru and Auckland...

Photo: RNZ Now that the official cash rate has been cut, with expectations of further reductions through next year, most forecasters are predicting a gradual economic recovery. But economists at the country's largest bank say things could be different this time. ANZ's economists said there was "significant uncertainty" about how the economy would respond to lower interest rates, because the recession the country had been through was deliberately engineered by the Reserve Bank. "Typically, the OCR is lowered in response to some kind of negative national income and confidence shock, but that's not the case in this deliberate recession. How much activity has been deferred rather than cancelled?" Senior economist Miles Workman said every easing cycle was not the same as the last. "If you thi...

RNZ's money correspondent Susan Edmunds. Photo: RNZ Got a burning question you want answered? Email susan.edmunds@rnz.co.nz I've heard of people having investments in gold alongside things like shares and term deposits. Is that something that is worth doing? Gold prices have risen steadily since the end of last year - the price of a gold bar even hit US$1 million (NZ$1.62 million) for the first time this week. While most people won't have the resources to invest in a whole bar, some retail investors do include precious metals in their investment portfolios. Chris Smith, who is general manager at CMC Markets, describes the past year as "stellar" for gold, with a lot of things working in its favour. High inflation coupled with the prospect of interest rates dropping had created a "really...

Four Australian banks in New Zealand made about $7 billion in profits in 2023. Photo: RNZ Analysis - The Commerce Commission's banking market study has concluded more competition is required to reduce the profits of the big four banks. But the report suggests increasing competition may be ineffective unless customers are easily able and willing to switch between banks. In 2023, the four Australian banks operating in New Zealand made approximately NZ$7.1 billion in profit, representing $1400 per person. Despite many customers struggling due to increasing mortgage costs, the banks' profits rose. The previous government commissioned the market study to look into whether competition for personal banking services in New Zealand was working. The report highlights a lack of true competition, w...

Photo: 123RF Tougher economic times and staff shortages appear to be shrinking the number of cafés and restaurants operating in New Zealand. Stats NZ data shows that last year was the first time in more than 20 years that the number of cafés and restaurants shrank compared to the year before. Last year, Stats NZ's enterprise data shows, there were 8958 café and restaurant businesses recorded, compared to 8964 the year before. Every other year in the data the number of enterprises recorded held stable or increased year-on-year. There are still twice as many as in 2000. Data from economist Shamubeel Eaqub showed that the number of food and beverage and hospitality businesses in New Zealand had grown more than 30 percent since 2000, on a per capita basis. "It has also grown as a share of th...