24 Jul 2013

Primary industry leaders keep up camp's momentum

9:17 am on 24 July 2013

Primary industry leaders who went to a boot camp last year in the United States are continuing to meet to keep the ball rolling on the ideas they generated for lifting the sector's performance.

About 20 senior executives from the dairy, meat, seafood, wine and horticulture industries, as well as Government ministries attended the week-long brain storming session at Stanford University.

They discussed how they could co-operate to grow the value of the primary sector.

One of the instigators, The New Zealand Merino Company's chief executive, John Brackenridge, says they agreed to continue meeting every six months to carry on the boot camp action plan.

They met in Hawke's Bay in February and will catch up again in Wellington next month.

"We've identified eight areas that collectively and individually we need to work on and at the moment we're working on, if you like, a deep dive on three of them," Mr Brackenridge says.

He says one is around attracting more talent into the primary sector.

Another is about sustainability and the leadership position the industry can make, with differentiation, reputation and monetising to the benefit of producers and companies, he says.

A third area is market movements and how to target overseas consumers.