Tauranga's Keith Tempest has taken on a busy life as professional director since stepping down as chief executive of electricity generator and retailer TrustPower.
Mr Tempest was recently named as one of 18 new appointments to a state-owned enterprise board, joining national grid operator Transpower New Zealand. He has two days
of induction next week and will attend his first board meeting at the end of this month.
It is his fifth directorship.
He replaced Bill Capamagian as an independent director of Port of Tauranga in December last year and he was already a director of NZ Bus, Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH) and Ultrafast Broadband, a partnership between CFH and WEL Networks, which is rolling out optic-fibre broadband in Tauranga, Waikato and Taranaki.
Mr Tempest joined former Auckland International Airport chief executive Don Huse as a new board member of Transpower.
"I've been on working groups and involved with governance in the electricity industry for the past 25 years," said Mr Tempest. "I'm familiar with what happens out there and I guess my understanding will be useful for Transpower, particularly from a commercial point of view.
"The Government has been going through the SOEs and Crown entities and reinforcing commercial skills on the boards. Transpower has a huge number of projects and a massive capital spend, something in the vicinity of $1.5 billion."
Mr Tempest is taking a strong interest in the roll-out of fast broadband in Tauranga, which should start in July/August. The difference will be enormous in terms of capacity and speed - 20 to 50 times faster - and local businesses which send large files overseas are crying out for this service, he says.
