Our Innovation Day and Conference Speakers
Samantha Baldwin is Direction Leader for Horticulture goes Urban Hua Ki Te Ao and Science Group Leader for the Annual Crops breeding group at Plant and Food Research. Horticulture goes Urban is delivering the science required to develop future growing packages for indoor production of perennial fruits and vines. This includes improved plant genetics, optimising the growing environments and an understanding of the future urban consumer needs.
Samantha has also been part of the team leading the development of an indoor growing collective. This started with the inaugural Growing the Future Indoors Summit 2023 and Samantha is now developing an action plan with members of the collective to further build this industry in NZ.
Samantha is presenting at the Waikato Innovation Park as part of our our Innovation Day and is also speaking at conference.
Karen Orr is a Sector Decarbonisation Advisor at EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority), a government agency which supports mobilising New Zealanders in clean and clever energy use. Prior to joining EECA Karen spent five years with Horticulture New Zealand, including a year secondment to MPI.
It was in her role working with greenhouse growers using heat to grow their crops that Karen first came across EECA and formed a relationship to drive transformation change at a sectorial level through energy efficiency and transitioning to low emissions technology.
Karen is presenting at the Waikato Innovation Park as part of our our Innovation Day
Miranda Clayton is our wonderful Master of Ceremonies for both our industry dinner and our conference. You may remember her from last year’s dinner. Miranda is a corporate communications specialist at Farmers' Mutual Group (FMG). Her professional background is diverse, spanning science, public affairs, communications, and the arts. She worked in government relations in Wellington for many years before joining FMG.
Miranda is a long term board member of the Capital Creative Arts Trust (formerly known as the Wellington's Fringe Arts Trust) and is the Chair at the Hawke's Bay Prima Volta Charitable Trust. A truly renaissance woman.
Steve Gurney is our after-dinner speaker. A household name in New Zealand, Steve is a professional adventure athlete turned professional motivational speaker and trainer. He won the Coast to Coast a record nine times and raced mountain bikes for New Zealand at the world champs twice. He has raced in the Borneo jungles and made a world record crossing of the searing Sahara desert by wind-power.
Nothing ever goes to plan when there are mountains, rivers, swamps and wild animals involved, and Steve will share with us the resilience lessons he’s learned. He loves inspiring people to greater heights and loves teaching how to make mole-hills out of mountains.
Hon Andrew Hoggard is opening our Conference 2024. He is the Minister for Biosecurity and Food Safety and the Associate Minister of Agriculture (Animal Welfare, Skills) and for the Environment.
Qualified in Applied Economics, Andrew is a lifelong dairy farmer who worked his way to the role of President of Federated Farmers of New Zealand. He held this role until 2023 and later the same year was elected to Parliament as an ACT Party MP.
Gerard Vaughan is a Programme Director of Farmstrong, a wellbeing programme for farmers and growers. Since working on the initial idea for Farmstrong in 2014, he has led the programme through the various phases of research, concept development, programme scoping, impact framework design, partnership establishment, launch in 2015 and continues to oversee the programmes ongoing implementation.
Gerard also chairs Governance Groups of other New Zealand mental health related programmes, within manufacturing, construction and NZ Rugby. He is also an advisor to the Scotland Farmstrong programme that launched in 2023.
Gerard will speak at conference about Farmstrong, the science behind wellbeing and tools to help staff.
Kara Beaumont is Manager and Co-owner of Ardmore Nurseries in Auckland. Ardmore is a a wholesale plant nursery that produces more than 700,000 plants a year. Kara has been in various management roles at the nursery for over 10 years, and has been a co-owner for the last three. Prior to that she had roles in environmental approvals, project management and land management in New Zealand and in Melbourne, Australia; in both private and public sector organisations. Ardmore Nurseries is a family business, started by Kara's grandfather over 50 years ago. Kara currently holds the Greenlife Landscape position on the NZPPI Board.
Kara will talk at conference about the challenges of adopting innovation at a 50 year old nursery.
Simon Yarrow is Group Manager Agritech at Callaghan Innovation. He is responsible for the industry engagement strategy and delivery of the Agritech Activator products and services for Callaghan Innovation. Prior to this he tripled an export nutritional business for New Image Group, was CEO of a venture-capital funded start-up in bacterial stabilisation called Encoate; and managed a $25 million dollar biotechnology business unit of agribusiness company LIC.
Simon is speaking at conference on Agritech's global path for New Zealand.
Devin Westley is nursery manager at Southern Woods Nursery in Christchurch. His role sees him tackling a wide range of tasks from plant costing, water management, environmental impact monitoring, product line development, customer workshops and anything else the management team or board can think to throw at him on top of producing and caring for Southern Woo'd’s large nursery stock.
Devin is facilitating our Innovation in our Industry panel at conference.
Kate Marshall is General Manager of Sales and Marketing at Waimea Nurseries Ltd in Richmond. Kate has worked at Waimea Nurseries for more than 20 years so has deep expertise in plant production. During her time at Waimea she has worked in account management for retail, commercial and group marketing before taking up her current GM role.
Kate is one of the panellists on our Innovation in our Industry panel
Nathan Hewson is Managing Director at Advanced Hort. He is responsible for day-to-day operations of the company, which includes overseeing system design and recommendations and business development. With a Lincoln University bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Science and Honours degree in Plant Science, Nathan’s approach always considers not only the best design from an engineering point of view but also from an agronomist perspective. Nathan has been involved in several major horticultural projects, from design through to commission, across New Zealand, Australia and Saudi Arabia and has a wealth of experience and knowledge.
Nathan is one of the panellists on our Innovation in our Industry panel.
Alex Wilson is the Director Forestry Engagement and Advice for Te Uru Rakau – New Zealand Forest Service. She has more than 17 years in leadership positions, spanning central government, crown research, and local government, focused on strategic leadership, staff management, training and capability development and operational delivery. Her technical experience includes community engagement, strategic partnerships, catchment management, education and training, forestry, environmental funding, and landfill aftercare.
Alex contributed to the establishment of the One Billion Trees programme and supported the regional scale-up of Te Uru Rakau – New Zealand Forest Service.
Alex is talking at conference about the TUR’s latest data and insights into the native nursery sector.
Tony Wilson is general manager at Agrecovery, which provides agrichemical container recycling and chemical recovery for farmers and growers. Tony oversees operations, projects, recycling trials and six team members. He has been leading the organisation since October 2020. Tony spent 12 years with the Ministry for Primary Industries, where he managed parts of the biosecurity system and, more recently, the food system.
Tony is presenting at conference on the future of plastics recycling in plant production.
Matt Dolan is Chief Executive of NZ Plant Producers Inc and has been since its inception.
Formed in 2017, following a review to consolidate and strengthen the industry's voice, NZPPI emerged to unify various sector interests under a single, more capable organisation. NZPPI focuses on supporting its members, which include entities involved in growing plants that serve multiple purposes—from food production and forest regeneration to urban beautification and backyard gardening.
Matt is giving an overview of NZPPI’s activities and priorities in 2024.