Pacific Hub grows into a hive of activity

Last year, Pacific Trade & Invest (PT&I) NZ launched The Pacific Hub (www.pacifichub.co.nz), a web resource for companies and investors seeking opportunities for trading with and investing in the Pacific islands region.

In less than a year, this online initiative has been successful in getting several exporters, importers, investors and investees together.

“The Pacific Hub has conceived and built by our team in Auckland after our 2015 Investment Mission to Micronesia,” says Michael Greenslade, Trade Commissioner, PT&I NZ. “We felt that we needed a permanent online presence to promote investment ready projects from the Pacific.”

The concept was to provide “tempters” to Investors who would contact the PTI Auckland based Investment Manager Manuel Valdez directly and for him to qualify the investor and manage the introduction to the Pacific project owner, Mr Greenslade explained.

Mr Valdez manages the introductions and the due diligence process.

“Pacific Hub has been online for most of 2016 and we are really happy with the results, which I shared with the PT&I Trade Commissioners at our recent planning meeting in Fiji,” Mr Greenslade said.

Seventy projects are currently listed on Pacific Hub. These projects have attracted 45 investment clients and from those, 45 clients have been referred to 58 projects – some clients have had more than one referral. Those 58 project referrals relate to 29 unique projects which have a collective project value of NZ$70.5 million, the Trade Commissioner revealed.

Currently, there are six live investment deals which have been generated from Pacific Hub with an estimated total value of NZ$8 million.

“This is still early days but we are very happy with these results and the strategic move we made to build Pacific Hub as part of our digital platform,” Mr Greenslade said.

“Our next step is the building of an online portal for companies selling products which will be known as True Pacific reflecting the genuine Pacific content and value of these products.”

New entries are continually being added to Pacific Hub. On arriving online at the Pacific Hub, readers will be able to view product and investment categories and will automatically be put in touch with relevant PT&I staff.