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Cloudy future for Strait rail freight, Can Martin Aircraft’s IPO fly?

Also in today's print edition: Small print reveals lending loophole, Rankings don't tell full story, Meet the BBC of publishing

Fri, 07 Nov 2014

In today’s NBR print edition:

KiwiRail is considering a proposal that will degrade the rail-capability of its Interislander ferry service within the next two years – and eliminate it altogether by 2020.

Reporter Nick Grant says industry observers believe such a proposal reflects KiwiRail’s short-term bottomline focus following a net annual loss of $248 million for the June year.

The loss of this seamless rail freight “bridge” between the North and South Islands is tipped to result in inter-island supply-chain inefficiencies, as well as put KiwiRail at risk of losing freight volume to foreign-owned coastal shipping services.

Later this month Interislander is due to announce how it plans to replace the Arahura, one of the three ferries it has plying the Cook Strait.

Meanwhile technology editor Chris Keall asks whether Martin Aircraft’s IPO can fly. “How can you rate a jetpack maker’s chances of success – especially when it won’t make any commercial product until 2016?

That’s the question potential investors will be asking as they thumb through Martin Aircraft’s prospectus, released this week.”

The Christchurch-based company, which numbers Jenny Morel and Andy Lark’s No 8 Ventures among its shareholders, is looking to raise $A25 million in an ASX listing to fund plans it says would make it the world’s first commercial jetpack manufacturer.

With no sales in the offing until 2016 and such a radical new technology as a manned jetpack, how can you tell if Martin Jetpack is fully valued, or rate its chances of success?

Columnist Michael Coote  re-examines the housing crisis and finds a loophole. He says the presupposition is that younger Kiwis should aspire to the same rates of home ownership as their post-World War II forebears.

But in many developed countries, for example, Germany, lifelong renting is the norm.

An argument could be mounted for encouraging landlords to flourish rather than trying to push their tenants into home

Economist Eric Crampton says while having five of New Zealand’s universities ranking in the top 400 worldwide doesn’t seem great at first glance and the minister, Steven Joyce, seems none too happy with it, for a country of 4.5 million it’s actually not too bad – depending on what the government wants from them.

If the goal is mass education but no scaling of the commanding heights, the system works. But with or without large influxes of foreign students, it simply is not geared to reaching the Top 100. 

That would take substantial changes coming out of the minister’s office, not exhortations to the universities to try harder to get foreign students.

He proposes consolidation within the sector.

Veteran media columnist David Cohen says almost everybody in the news biz seems to agree that the recent election campaign was probably the maddest on record. Only one local journalist, however, has done something to preserve its memory between book covers.

Madmen is the aptly titled work by Auckland writer Steve Braunias on the latest electoral lunacy. In a wry, self-deprecating media release, Mr Braunias rattles off the following memorable interludes from his time spent chronicling the race: visiting Kim Dotcom’s creepy mansion; stealing a dinghy to track down the lost tribe of the ACT; falling on hard times and asking Whale Oil for a job; inviting Nicky Hager to Hamilton and leaving him there; and, a touch mysteriously, hanging out in the back of John Key’s campaign bus while interesting substances were being passed around.

But Mr Cohen reveals that the self-published book is one of three rather unusual books being published, one in fact being his own Greatest Hits and the third Julie Burchill’s  Unchosen. Is this a trend?

All this and more in today’s National Business Review. Out now.

 

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Cloudy future for Strait rail freight, Can Martin Aircraft’s IPO fly?
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