Pacific Wide would like to welcome Kevin Gower to the group. Kevin has taken over as Operations Manager and will be working with Ben Wells at our Orchiata processing factory Pacific Bark in Matamata. We are looking forward to working with him.

This month Anthony visited Korea to follow up with the growers who visited New Zealand in February for the Orchiata Education Tour.

Anthony was fortunate enough to be able to visit majority of the growers who attended the tour.

Many of these growers are doing trials with Orchiata and seeing very positive results, while others have now changed to growing in Orchiata and are growing higher quality orchids.

Clive and Dorothy travelled to the United Kingdom and Europe this month where they passed through England, Scotland, Ireland, Amsterdam, Belgium, and Germany.

They were able to visit a number of growing media suppliers, orchid growers and garden centres during their time there.

Pacific Wide attended the Taiwan International Orchid Show for the second year.

We again focused on promoting Orchiata. Our stand was set up to show the production process from the forest to our factory, Pacific Bark, then on to the end user in the Greenhouse.

While in Taiwan, we were fortunate enough to be invited to speak in the ICOGO annual meeting where Anthony spoke about our Pinus radiata and Sphagnum moss production in New Zealand.

We feel that the orchid show went extremely well, Pacific Wide received positive feedback and a lot of genuine interest in Orchiata.  Pacific Wide also joined in the Orchid display competition where our display received 2 prizes, third place equal and an overseas award. We look forward to attending TIOS 2010.

This month Pacific Wide organised for 10 leading Korean orchid growers to come to New Zealand for the Orchiata Educational Tour.

Jess and Anthony along with four members from Ever Green Co Ltd, our Korean distributor, travelled to key areas of the North Island to educate the growers on the Orchiata production process.

They visited suppliers of the raw product, had a tour of our Orchiata processing facility, Pacific Bark and visited some New Zealand orchid growers and greenhouses.

It was a very successful visit for all involved. Pacific Wide looks forward to visiting these growers in Korea in the future .

We are now well into the first month in 2009. Most of us at Pacific Wide had the opportunity to take a break over the festive season, during which we enjoyed the lovely warm weather summer had to offer.

The break was a chance for us all to get refreshed and we have all come back excited to take on the new challenges 2009 will present.

The year is quickly coming to an end and we are now leading up to the festive season.

This month the Pacific Wide staff celebrated Christmas with an overnight trip to Hanmer Springs. The Team at Coastpak along with their moss suppliers also celebrated with great night of Karaoke at the Railway Hotel in Hokitika.

The team at Pacific Wide would like to wish you all a safe and enjoyable Christmas and New Year period. We are looking forward to a prosperous 2009 which we hope you can share with us.

Anthony travelled to Korea for a quick visit before meeting up with Clive in Japan for the inaugural Pacific Wide Celebration Classic - a golf competition to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Pacific Wide.

The golf was a great success with Mr T. Akimoto winning the competition. The golf match was then followed with a function at the Grand Arc Hotel where they were joined by many more customers and friends to continue the 20th Anniversary celebrations.

We would also like to welcome to Daryl Smith our new Operations Manager at Pacific Bark, our Matamata Orchiata processing factory.

This month Anthony and Garry visited our USA distributor, Greenhouse Specialists, based in Hawaii. Over the four day visit Anthony and Garry travelled with Michael from Greenhouse Specialists visiting customers growing orchids with Orchiata and SpagMoss.

It was a very successful trip and Garry and Anthony both thoroughly enjoyed meeting a range of growers who were focusing on quality and niches for orchid shipments targeted for the US mainland. However, Garry was extremely upset that due to the short time they visited, he was unable to visit Honolulu!

Anthony and Garry travelled to China this month to visit our distributors of Orchiata and Chile Sphagnum Moss. While in China they talked to growers interested in doing trials with our orchid bark growing media - Orchiata. We look forward with working with the growers and see this as a positive step to becoming established in the China market.

It is sad to be saying goodbye to two of our long term employees this month.  Meredith has decided to move on from here role as the Groups Technical Manager. However she has been convinced to contract back a few hours each week in a consultancy role.  Meredith will deal with Technical issues as the Pacific Wide Group requires.

Petra has also chosen to refresh herself after five years service at Pacific Wide after moving from the office administration and putting some order back into logistics.  We wish her all the best for her future endeavours. As a temporary measure Sarah will be looking after Logistics in the interim.

The Pacific Wide Group celebrated 20 years in business this month. Several Japanese customers made their way over to celebrate this occasion with us.

At the celebration we held an auction to raise money for the Tropicoir Girls Orphanage and Tropicoir School in Sri Lanka, the auction went very well and we were able to raise over NZ$3,500. Thank you to those who kindly donated items for the auction.

While our Japanese guests were in New Zealand we took them over to visit Coastpak Holdings in Hokitika where they were also able to visit a moss swamp. This was a worthwhile experience for three of the group who had never experienced this before although they have sold moss in Japan for a number of years.

Pacific Bark opened the doors to their brand new Matamata production factory this month. We have now relocated from our Napier site to join Daltons in Matamata. We were lucky enough to have seven Japanese guests travel over from Japan to celebrate this opening with us, Mr & Mrs Jufuku, Mr Mukoyama, Mr & Mrs Nakamura, Mr Kakuta and Mr Nohara.