Palmerston North is a great place to do business

For release: 25/11/09

Forget its reputation – Palmerston North is a great place to do business

The City gets a lot of bad press, but “Palmerston North is a great place to do business” says Romuald Rudzki, Director of the New Zealand School of Export, which has just released a short video filmed by Made from New Zealand and available on its website: http://www.export.ac.nz

“So many people like to take a pop at Palmy” says Rom “but I had no hesitation in establishing the School here.  The city and its business support agencies are supportive and the diversity of business activity is very much underestimated, so we were proud to show and talk about Palmy in our video.”

The School, which offers the country’s only internationally accredited professional qualifications in international trade (export and import), has been assisting companies nationwide since opening in 2007 and is about to embark on a campaign to attract ex-pat kiwis to its distance learning programme.

“Mentioning Palmerston North can be a bit of a gamble” says Marketing Director Alison Vickers “at national events, revealing we’re based in Palmy often leads to laughs of derision or quizzical looks and shrieks of ‘Why?’ – I think this is awfully narrow-minded”.

Viewers of the video may also be surprised to note that both Rom and Alison are ‘Poms’ – a fact which did not go un-noticed by the film crew.  But as Rom says “no-one else was prepared to run with the Diploma of International Trade because of the very high standards set by the global body IATTO.  It is a great pity that - unlike in other countries where the government gets behind the professional training of its exporters – the government here has no funds available which is why we need an angel investor or patron to help us grow.  I suppose living here for so long has encouraged us into that Kiwi-mentality of ‘giving it a go’, although we realise the dangers of this, which is why we established the School in the first place – to help exporters eliminate the risks of doing business overseas”.

ENDS  

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