Major external investment positions ASI for growth

Alexandria, VA, USA (13 July, 2016) — Advanced Solutions International (ASI) today announced Bregal Sagemount has made a significant investment aimed at supporting the company’s continued expansion.

ASI is a leading global provider of cloud-based software to associations and nonprofits and the developer of iMIS 20 — the industry’s first engagement management system (EMS). Bregal Sagemount is a private equity firm focused on investing both capital and strategic assistance into market-leading companies in high-growth sectors. The investment will be used to strengthen ASI’s market position, expand product offerings, and support growth initiatives.

“We are very excited to be working with a highly respected and innovative firm like Bregal Sagemount,” said Robert Alves, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ASI. “Their investment — on the heels of our recent growth — will help us expand the success of our market-leading iMIS 20 Engagement Management System (EMS)™.”

“We are honoured to partner with the management team at ASI,” said Bregal Sagemount founding partner Daniel Kim. “They have built a world-class organisation with a strong track record of technology leadership, client satisfaction, and profitable growth.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Daniel Kim and Adam Fuller of Bregal Sagemount will join ASI’s Board of Directors.

About Bregal Sagemount

Bregal Sagemount is a growth-focused private capital firm with $650 million in committed capital. The firm provides flexible capital and strategic assistance to market-leading companies in high-growth sectors across a wide variety of transaction situations. Bregal Sagemount invests $15 million to $150 million per transaction into targeted sectors including software, digital infrastructure, healthcare IT / services, business and consumer services, and financial technology / specialty finance. For more information, please visit www.sagemount.com.

About ASI

Advanced Solutions International (ASI) is a global software company and recognised industry thought leader that focuses on helping associations and nonprofits increase operational and financial performance through the use of best practices, proven solutions, and ongoing client advisement. Since 1991, ASI has served nearly 4,000 clients and millions of users worldwide, both directly and indirectly through a network of more than 100 partners, and currently maintains corporate offices in the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. Visit www.advsol.com for more information.

This press release was originally sourced from Advanced Solutions International.

Australian retail industry group, the National Retail Association (NRA), has announced the appointment of Dominique Lamb as its new CEO.

Lamb is an industrial relations and employment law specialist and has previously served as director of the NRA’s legal division and Principal of the association’s law firm, NRA Legal. She has been closely involved with the retail industry’s review of the award system and has worked closely with NRA members on employment and enterprise bargaining issues.

“We believe that having Dominique step up to become the CEO, supported by a new head of NRA Legal, will further strengthen the NRA’s credentials as the nation’s leading retail legal specialist, particularly in relation to employment law,” said NRA Chair Mark Brodie.

Lamb has also used her legal training in a voluntary capacity to help women confronting domestic violence. She has also spearheaded efforts within the NRA to raise awareness of the impact on businesses of employees dealing with domestic violence. In her new role as CEO, the NRA Board will encouraged this continued advocacy work, said Brodie.

“The NRA has a 100-year history of supporting retail businesses and representing their needs to politicians and policy makers. I am honoured to be able to continue this track record of service and success,” said Lamb.

“The retail sector is a vital part of the national economy and does more than its fair share of creating jobs, particularly for part-time, casual and lower-skilled workers. That makes an organisation such as the NRA critically important in speaking to government about the needs of the industry, and standing up for employers,” she said.

Ms Lamb’s appointment follows the recent election of former CEO Trevor Evans to the Federal Parliament as the Member for Brisbane.

This article was originally soucured from Power Retail.

The new financial reporting standards set by the External Reporting Board require some registered charities to disclose the salary details of individual staff members, as part of the requirements to include information about related party transactions.

For those charities reporting using the Tier 3 or Tier 4 standards, related parties include people who are closely associated with the charity and have the ability to influence the charity (for instance, committee members, officeholders and those involved in the strategic management of the charity) AND their close family members. So if a staff member is a son or daughter of a Board member, for example, details of that staff member’s salary will need to be disclosed where the salary is significant to the charity, or it is not on normal terms and conditions (for example, the salary is significantly higher or lower than the market rate).

Understandably, charities are concerned about the privacy implications of this requirement. There is a short answer to the privacy issue – the Financial Reporting Act 2013 provides that the disclosure of personal information (such as salary details) is not a breach of the relevant privacy principles in the Privacy Act 1993 if the disclosure is required for compliance with a standard issued by the External Reporting Board. And there is no requirement to name the staff member concerned. The standards set out what must be disclosed, including a description of the related party relationship, and a description and amount of the transaction(s). Charities Services have some useful guidance on the Charities website about these requirements.

But Charities Services appreciate that salary information is generally viewed in New Zealand as being highly sensitive. While it is not necessary to name the individual concerned, in many cases it will be easy for those involved in the charity to know who the individual is. Charities in these situations can request, when submitting their annual returns and performance reports or financial statements to us, that this information be withheld from the publicly-accessible Charities Register. Charities Services can restrict access to information on the register where it is in the public interest to do so. While Charities Services consider each request on a case-by-case basis, protecting the privacy of individuals employed by charities is likely to be a public interest that justifies restricting public access to the information. 

Further details about restricting access to information on the register is available on the Charities website.

Ref: Charities Update Newsletter: June 2016

The new financial reporting standards are finally here – so what are they and how do they affect you?

Up until now, any form of financial reporting has been accepted from charities, but 1 April this year marked the introduction of the New Reporting Standards (NRS). NRS are a set of legal documents that set out the way all charities in New Zealand now need to present their financial information when it is submitted to Charities Services as part of their annual return. If this is all news to you then please take some time to read through the information on our website under the new reporting standards section before completing your annual return.

Here's a quick summary of changes:

1. Instead of attaching financial statements, an annual report or any other form of financial information to your annual return, you now submit a “Performance Report”.
2. The format and content of your Performance Report is prescribed in the standard for the Tier which is relevant for your charity. The smaller your charity is, the simpler the requirements are.
3. The Performance Report contains financial and non-financial information, which is why it has been re-named.
4. The annual return form has been re-written to reflect the changes as a result of the new reporting standards.

We understand this is a big change for charities, and we have staff available to answer your questions and help you through the process. We have also been reviewing as many annual returns as we can, and the main issues we’ve been seeing so far can be grouped into three categories:

Some charities are not yet aware of the changes:

These charities seem to be unaware that the way financial information should be presented has changed. It looks like they’ve just filed their financial report in the same format as last year. The format and content of the Performance Report required under the new reporting standards is quite specific. An optional template is available to help charities with the new requirements by ensuring they have included everything. The template, guidance notes and tutorials can be found on our 

website for Tier 3 and Tier 4 .

Non-financial Information has been added to an old format set of financial statements:

These charities appear to be aware that there are new reporting requirements, but have used the same reporting format as last year, with some additional non-financial information. It’s great to see that charities are including non-financial information, but the format and content of the financial parts also needs updating. Having a look at the optional template may help those charities to identify where they need to update their reports to fully meet the requirements of the new standards.

Attempted to comply with the standard, but have room for improvement:

These charities have had a good go at creating a Performance Report, but a few things could be improved. In the first couple of years of this change, we will be focusing on making sure that as many charities as possible are adopting the new standards in the first instance, and then after that we will be focusing on improving the quality of the reporting. If you’ve made your best effort to comply with the standard, that’s great. As part of our compliance work, we will be checking a number of these reports in detail, and will give feedback wherever possible. We encourage you to revisit what you’ve done each year to see if there are any areas that could be improved upon.

This media release was sourced directly from Charities Services and was written by Julia Fletcher.

Reduced deliveries by New Zealand Post have affected board-of-trustee elections, School Trustees Association says.

New Zealand Post cut deliveries to three days a week last year, because of falling mail volume.

More than half of the country's schools held board elections earlier this month.

The association's president Lorraine Kerr said it had complaints from some parents and returning officers about voting papers not being delivered, or only one set arriving in a two-parent house.

The association would be reviewing its processes, she said.

"[We will] look at what went well, but equally look at what didn't go well and what we need to learn from that and how we mitigate it. From the New Zealand Post perspective, gosh that's a huge conversation we will need to have because this will happen again in three years."

The Ministry of Education said 24 schools had been granted extensions for reasons including missed timeframes and postal constraints.

It also said some households got the wrong number of voting forms.

"We are also aware of schools where the electoral roll processing has meant that the correct numbers of voting forms have not been delivered to households."

But Principals' Federation president Iain Taylor was not aware of any problems.

"I haven't actually heard too many negative things actually about the election and even the whole thing about the postage has surprised me actually," he said.

"Obviously different communities [and] different schools have different challenges in getting a confident board, but as we know there's not many schools that haven't got a board so it's obviously been OK so to speak."

New Zealand Post said it was in the process of checking if any complaints were made and was open to discussion on the matter.

"New Zealand Post would be more than happy to discuss and provide advice on postal timeframes for future elections with the School Trustees Association and the Ministry of Education," it said.

"We would also be happy to be involved in any review of the regulations around the running of these elections."

This article was originally sourced from Radio NZ.

The recently-established Electricity Retailers’ Association of New Zealand (ERANZ) has appointed a Chief Executive.

Jenny Cameron, most recently the Director of External Relations for the Brewers’ Association of Australia and New Zealand, will be joining ERANZ as its inaugural Chief Executive on 23 February. “We are delighted to have a person of Jenny’s calibre and experience taking on the role of Chief Executive,” says ERANZ Chair Alan McCauley.

“From an electricity retailers’ perspective, we have been in need of coordinated industry voice on complex industry issues for some time. Jenny will play a significant leadership role in communicating and liaising with important stakeholders on these issues, including electricity consumers,” says Alan.

“It is an exciting prospect to establish a new industry association, especially in such an essential sector,” says Jenny.

“The electricity retail profile in New Zealand is unique and I am looking forward to learning more about the sector. There are plenty of opportunities to continue to develop a sustainable and competitive retail market to meet customers’ needs,” she says.

Incorporated in August 2015, ERANZ members include Contact Energy, Genesis Energy, Nova Energy, Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Pulse Energy and Trustpower.

ERANZ’s purpose is to promote and enhance a sustainable and competitive New Zealand electricity retail market. It will represent the industry on important sector-wide issues such as delivering value to customers and supporting an open, competitive and effective electricity market.

This media release was sourced directly from Scoop.

Market demand should dictate the pace of growth of New Zealand's sheep milking industry if it is to avoid a boom-bust price cycle trap often seen in emerging industries.

Growing too quickly could collapse the market, Landcorp consultant and agri-businessman Andrew MacPherson said at the New Zealand Veterinary Association Conference in Hamilton.

This was a possibility as cash-strapped bovine dairy farmers looked for new ways to increase their returns, he said.

"We run the real risk that every man and his dog is going to try and milk sheep. The problem with that, especially if they are able to get their milk dried, is that they will be in the market potentially with a commodity and if that happens, I don't think we will be facing a very happy future in the medium term."

Landcorp had entered the sheep milking industry in partnership with the SLC Group to form Spring Sheep Dairy and had no interest in selling bulk sheep milk powder in Asia or selling it in the market and taking a commission, he said.

"Landcorp and SLC have been vocal critics of New Zealand's commodity trade because we believe that if we do this right we can create long term (sustainability). And actually we believe it's the right thing to do for our investors."

Milk from Spring Sheep Dairy is processed at Waikato Innovation Park in Hamilton and is used to create yoghurt, pro-biotics, ice cream and specialist niche milk powders such as protein products used by high performance athletes. The company will also launch its sheep's milk gelato product in New Zealand late this month.

The biggest challenge the industry faced was low production among milking ewes. The answer was better genetics in its milking flock and plans were under way to introduce genetics from the lacaune, a French sheep breed known for its high milk production.

Ideally, the New Zealand milking sheep would be a high milk producing animal and produce at least two lambs. The challenge would be to feed this sheep adequately so it maintained proper body condition, he said.

Maui Milk's Peter Gatley​ said New Zealand production levels were poor in comparison to overseas sheep milking industries at around 100-150 litres of milk per ewe.

Ewe production on intensive European and Israeli sheep milking farms was more than 500 litres of milk solids per ewe all year round. In France, which has the closest farm systems to New Zealand, had an average production of 400L/ewe.

The lack of international trading of sheep milk products meant New Zealand had adopted a price using the kilogram of milksolids price including lactose used by the Dairy Goat Co-operative as a guide. This came to around $17/kg MS or $3.06/litre, he said.

But it was not necessarily an economic goldmine because sheep milking farms had high, fixed on-farm costs. On the flipside, there was a stable milk price, its environmental sustainability had a lot of appeal and New Zealand was experienced in sheep farming and in turning pasture into milk production.

Sheep milk offered an alternative for those intolerant to cow's milk. It had a different taste and properties to goat's milk. It was extremely concentrated compared to other milk types, comprising 18-19 per cent milk solids, higher than about 12 per cent for cow's or goat's milk.

That meant it had to be diluted when milk from their farm in western Taupo was processed.

​Gatley said the industry faced a lot of challenges. Genetically, it did not have the right sheep yet, they were not being adequately fed and the industry's management systems needed further refinement.

"At $3 a litre, and $17/kg milk solids, we can make a go of this. We are only limited by market demand and our ability to sell the product and that final link in the chain is extremely important."

He believed it had the potential to grow to $200 million by 2030. Given most of the on-farm costs were fixed, most of the gains in ewe milk production would be made through better genetics and feeding.

"I think we can grow it to the same size as the dairy goat industry but a lot more quickly."

Gatley said they planned to expand their existing sheep milking operation by converting another western Taupo farm, Waikino Station, to sheep milking. The farm will be a hybrid system where the sheep are farmed using both barns and outdoor pastures.

"We are going to convert that and milk 4000 ewes there and run it the way we think it ought to be done, bearing in mind everything we have learned in New Zealand so far and everything we have gleaned from offshore."

He was confident the industry could make the on-farm gains for it to be a successful industry, but overseas marketing at the expected prices was key.

"From what we have seen so far and what we have seen offshore, I'm very confident we can produce those 300-400 litres per ewe and do it very efficiently if they can sell the product. We have a business here all right."

This article was originally sourced from Stuff.

Someone is stealing avocados in New Zealand. Not just picking a handful to make guacamole for a picnic, but driving up to orchards in the dark of night, using rakes to sweep hundreds from trees, collecting them in blankets and driving off to sell them illegally at road stands, grocery stores and small restaurants in Auckland, according to police.

The problem appears to be one of surging demand and short supply, avocado industry officials say. Traditionally, the soft green fruit have been grown largely for export, but local consumers have been rapidly acquiring a taste for them -- just as heavy rainfall in neighbouring Australia badly damaged last year's harvest. As a result, the price has more than tripled, reaching as high as $NZ6 per avocado ($5.70 in Australian dollars) and fuelling a spate of stealth robberies by enterprising thieves.

"It's an easy way to make a quick buck, but I don't think we are dealing with a sophisticated or highly organised operation here, more opportunistic," Jen Scoular, chief executive officer of New Zealand's avocado association, was quoted as saying in the Guardian on Wednesday. Officials said there have been dozens of thefts. In the most recent incident, police said, midnight bandits liberated 350 avocados from an orchard in the Bay of Plenty area on the country's north island.

Police warned that anyone handling or eating the purloined pears may be facing a health risk, because those that have been recently sprayed with pesticides could carry toxins on their skins. No violence or confrontations have been reported in connection with the crime wave, but Scoular said many growers are installing automatic light and alarm systems to protect their lucrative crops.

New Zealand is far better known for exporting apples and kiwis, and its avocado production is dwarfed by giants such as Mexico, which exports more than 1.3 metric tons per year. But its avocados have been gaining popularity both at home and abroad, Scoular said, with Australia and the United States as the largest foreign customers and 96,000 new domestic households purchasing them last year.

She told the BBC that marketing the "amazingness of avocados" as well as their health benefits has created a demand the country cannot meet -- and a ripe target for pinchers.

This article was originally sourced from the Sydney Morning Herald and was written by Pamela Constable.

Leading forestry contractors are moving fast to ensure they understand and implement systems for meeting new health and safety laws brought in last month. Under the guidance of their industry association – the Forest Industry Contractors Association (FICA) – forest contractors are being encouraged to attend special workshops on the new legislation around health and safety in forestry workplaces. They have responded in greater numbers than ever before.

Ross Davis, President of FICA, says has they've seen a surge in contractor numbers attending new health and safety legislation workshops in Gisborne and Tokoroa. More are expected when the series of regional workshops goes to Balclutha on 16 June and up to Whangarei on 14 July. Contractors are turning out in droves for these events.

“FICA is all about professionalism,” says Davis, “so we’re making sure contractor owners are well prepared and proactive in meeting new workplace expectations.”

At the workshops, legal, safety and business management experts have been updating contracting industry leaders in forestry on expectations of new laws. Case studies are being used to help members come to grips with key aspects of the health and safety legislation.

“We’ve got some really practical and experienced workshop leaders to help our members get a practical understanding of the new laws,” says Davis, “and we’ve got a great thing going with law specialists from Minter Ellison Rudd Watts and ACC consultant, Martin Wouters from Manage Company.”

Discussion at workshops is highlighting that new health and safety laws deliberately spread responsibilities for PCBUs across a number of parties in forest workplaces. The workshop leaders are emphasising the need for leaders to know what is expected of them, their safety managers and their crew leaders right from the outset.

Davis adds, “Our workers and fellow contractors are busy working in technical action groups organised by our new Forest Industry Safety Council (FISC) These groups are providing new tools and techniques to implement more effective safety initiatives on the forest floor.”

“So FICA is showing real leadership for people who are serious about safety, and frankly to be in this business you have to be serious about it,” says Davis, “but, we’re not stopping here – we will be putting an industry-wide contractor certification system in place across forestry soon.”

Several new forestry initiatives are to be instigated to ensure only competent people running legally-compliant and tax-verified businesses are able to tender for forestry contracts. New contractor pre-qualification systems are expected to be up and running in a pilot phase later this year.

This media release was sourced directly from Scoop News.

To read all about the selective guidelines  from the Health and Safety at Work Act, please click here to view them. 

Please note these guidelines and forms should not be used as a substitute for legislation or legal advice.