Smith Stuart: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSmith Stuart: General Debate[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1082. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura):This—Rt Hon Winston Peters: Another Smith.STUART SMITH: Yes another Smith; you are very fortunate. This Government has set itself a challenge—Tim Macindoe: A wordsmith.STUART SMITH: —and it is a great challenge. A wordsmith that is right. It wants to double primary industry exports by 2025. But how are we going to do that? The regions are doing the heavy lifting and growing exports in this country and I happen to represent one of the regions that is one of the fastest-growing and one of most export-orientated regions in the country.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Whereabouts?STUART SMITH: I am coming to that. On top of having a strong agricultural sector it represents 80 percent of both the aquaculture and wine industries as well as having strong forestry manufacturing and tourism sectors. All of those sectors and those industries coming from Kaikoura really have a great international reputation and are really helping New Zealand to build its place in the world. To meet our export target we need to grow value over volume in a sustainable way. Possibilities for regional development have often been wasted when those initiatives have been driven by councils. Councils unfortunately are not natural business thinkers. When they do their budget for example they fill out the expenditure side of the budget and then simply make the income fit it whereas businesses have to go completely the other way round. Though councils I should say have a valuable role to play in growing business and business initiatives by providing the infrastructure and supporting business initiatives.Cluster groups provide one of the great initiatives and possibilities to grow businesses in the regional sectors. One in point is Marlborough Food and Beverage Innovation Cluster—it is quite a mouthful. This was formed a little over a year ago under the umbrella of the Marlborough Research Centre Trust the Riddet Institute Massey University and the ANZ bank. Together these entities provide the necessary capabilities and skills to assist companies to grow innovate and reach further up the value chain. Members gain access to investment funds education opportunities and research resources. This enhances their potential to grow. The Marlborough Food and Beverage Innovation Cluster although a Marlborough cluster is open to New Zealand companies as it has a vision to support “New Zealand Inc.” as well as regional development and to that end it has companies from Christchurch Nelson and Wellington that are participating.An example of the success of the cluster model is Renaissance Brewing which has recently undertaken a capital-raising exercise through crowdsourcing and is the first New Zealand company to successfully do so. Crowdfunding is an exciting new way for small companies to grow and gain access to capital markets through the Financial Markets Conduct Act which allows capital raising for small companies without the need for the same level of detailed disclosure and expense that the more traditional avenues will require. Renaissance Brewing successfully raised $700000 through the crowdfunding platform called Snowball Effect. But the next step once you have got yourself some funding is to actually ensure that you have a market and one of the key things to that end in the Marlborough region is the fact that breweries are in an area where wine is a big part of the export sector and buyers come to New Zealand to buy wine and naturally they are often craft beer buyers. So to that end they are starting a New Zealand - wide beer cluster in Marlborough. This is a fantastic initiative and will really help things grow along in that way.Free-trade agreements are also essential to fully grow our potential and this Government is pursuing these very vigorously and ensuring that New Zealand has access to growth markets. Combining trade agreements with innovative business initiatives such as clusters is really helping to harness New Zealand’s economic potential. Regions are not just a part of the New Zealand story; they are actually driving it.