Innovation Wins Award For Christchurch Company

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‘FUNDAMENTAL’ INNOVATION WINS AWARD FOR CHRISTCHURCH COMPANY

Innovative work by Christchurch’s Wool Production Technology has netted the company the prestigious ‘Excellence in e-Business: Business to Business award at the Computerworld Excellence Awards, held in Auckland last night (Friday July 6).

Wool Production Technology was amongst the cream of New Zealand’s IT innovators and entrepreneurs who were honoured at the annual Computerworld Excellence Awards with awards recognising the pervasiveness of e-business across a wide range of activities.

Judges said the three finalists, Wool Production Technology, Foodstuffs and FRST were very close, with the final decision going to Wool Production Technology for its Woolnet system because of its industry-wide impact. Woolnet is the world’s first internet-based wool trading system. Farmers, exporters, brokers, merchants and mills can trade wool 24/7. It now has over 1000 sellers and has traded over 1million kgs of wool.

The innovation of creative multimedia computer graphics company, Right Hemisphere, won Technology Innovator of the Year, against competition from finalists Taste Technologies and e-mmediate.

Double Computerworld Excellence Award winners were online magazine nzgirl, named e-Business of the Year and winner of the Business to Consumer excellence award, and South Auckland Health for its excellence of the use of IT in Government and winner of the Overall Excellence award.

TelstraSaturn CEO Jack Matthews won the CEO IT vision category, and Paul Swain, the Minister for Information Technology, the award for the Most Significant Contribution to IT in 2000.

IDG Communications, publisher of Computerworld, initiated the awards four years ago to recognise excellence in the IT sector. With strong sponsorship support from the IT vendor community, the awards have doubled in size each year, with the 2001 Computerworld Excellence Awards attracting a record number of entries, with more than 100 organisations and companies competing.

A complete list of winners is attached below.

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