When I saw this headline in Farmers Weekly, I was thrilled. A terrific agritech good news story for Hawke’s Bay.

But my thrill was crushed in the first paragraph, when I read that the “state-of-the-art” lab was opening in Canterbury! Indeed, Ravensdown’s lower-tech lab that had been operating in Awatoto and then, post-flood, in Hastings had been shut down. Seven of its staff moved to the spiffy new Rolleston location.

As Rural News pronounced in its lead sentence: “Hawke’s Bay’s loss is Canterbury’s gain…”

The new lab is 50% bigger, complete with robotics, “making it the most technologically advanced soil lab in NZ”. Behind the robotics is a 30-person team that collectively holds more than 50 tertiary qualifications. 

I’ll bet the place operates rain or shine and doesn’t require seasonal workers.

Isn’t Ravensdown’s ARL (Analytical Research Laboratories) the kind of business our vaunted Hawke’s Bay regional economic development bureaucracy is supposed to be championing for our region? 

Did anyone even know this loss was happening? Probably not, it’s really hard to get the Matariki Governance Group (which supposedly oversees our regional economic development strategy) together for meaningful work, and its offspring Regional Economic Development Agency (REDA) has been put in mothballs for a year while its interim Board and interim staff try to figure out who’s on interim first base.

But hey, instead of a high-tech lab at least we have FoodEast, a glorified meeting space fronting a small warehouse. [Where, believe it or not, the company that stores BayBuzz magazines and other trans-shipments is based … I believe the ‘synergy’ is that BayBuzz occasionally publishes a dedicated Food edition.]

In fairness, our mighty regional economic development apparatus probably could not have prevented the Ravensdown/ARL lab flight. It appears that some 70% of the lab tests they currently perform come from the South Island. 

But it would have been nice to have attempted some sort of competitive offer. At least that would indicate Hawke’s Bay had a functioning future-focused radar.

Here’s a video of the re-launch.