A plan has been unveiled to quadruple the value of Canterbury’s aerospace industry to bring in more than $1 billion a year while also tripling the high-paying sector’s workforce to 1500 by 2035.
Canterbury Aerospace Leadership Group (CALG) says its Waitaha Canterbury Aerospace Strategy also wants to see the traditionally white male preserve have 50% of its workforce identifying as women, Māori or Pasifika, with at least 20% Māori or Pasifika.
And it wants 50% of the sector to be carbon neutral by the same date. (Rocket Lab originally planned its first launchpad for outside Christchurch but was run out of town by then Green MP Eugenie Sage on emissions concerns.)
Today, the Canterbury aerospace sector contributed around $250 million to the region’s economy and employed around 500, said Emma Renowden, aerospace cluster lead at development agency ChristchurchNZ, citing “internal benchmarks”.
There were no current diversity stats.
“We will be kicking off a workforce mapping process this year that will include those figures,” Renowden said.
The plan calls for better promotion and better co-ordination between various local aerospace companies, the council, Canterbury University, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s The NZ Story and central government.
They are all part of the group behind the new strategy.
But there was no immediate word on any new funding from any of the parties. Renowden said discussions were under way.
Scenes from my visit to the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre in Sept last year pic.twitter.com/KeFDqJ3Qnv
— Chris Keall (@ChrisKeall) January 30, 2025
Space Minister Judith Collins, on hand for today’s launch, did come to the party with more red-tape cutting.
Collins announced that the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre, west of Banks Peninsula, will have Permanent Special Use Airspace approval from the Civil Aviation Authority from next month, completing a process she initiated last year.
From August 7, Tāwhaki will manage the entry, exit and operations of aircraft in the area and, at times, designate it a Restricted Airspace.
It will also be able to designate Danger Areas to let airspace users know there is a potential danger to flying in the area. The designations are internationally recognised terms for managing airspace.
MBIE and the Ministry of Transport were working on further regulatory reform that would make Tāwhaki a “sandbox” by year’s end for unencumbered test flights with minimal re-permitting, Collins said.
The Space Minister said she was open to applying the sandbox concept to other areas of the country, but that Tāwhaki’s isolated position and infrastructure gave it unique advantages.
Collins said some $30m had been spent on Tāwhaki (MBIE breaks it down as $16m in 2021 for purchase of the land at Kaitorete, $8m in 2022 to support operating costs for Tāwhaki and $5.4m in 2023 towards new facilities, including the sealed runway and hangar facilities).
While no direct new spending was on offer, the Government’s new Defence Capability Plan had aerospace elements.
It will see defence spending increase from 1% to 2% of GDP over the next eight years, with $9 billion in new funding over the period.
Collins noted that she and Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Shane Reti last week announced $5.6m to support five new joint NZ-Nasa research Earth observation projects, with one of the contracts going to Christchurch’s Kea Aerospace.
The city is home to a sizeable tech cluster, including aerospace players such as Tāwhaki tenant Dawn Aerospace which has just announced the first sale of its unmanned space plane (for US$17m to a Government space agency in Oklahoma) and has a growing business for its satellite propulsion systems, which now power 26 satellites, and the aforementioned Kea, founded by Mark Rocket, who recently hit headlines for being the first Kiwi in space and whose unmanned plane recently reached the stratosphere during a test flight.
Canterbury is also the home of a test flight programme for Wisk, a Boeing-backed pilotless air-taxi start-up that has a development partnership with Air New Zealand.
Representatives were also at the launch from Canterbury search-and-rescue drone maker Aerosearch and Nasby-based space radar tracking firm LeoLabs and Christchurch’s Fabrum (best known for its land-lubbing cryocooling and hydrogen business, but which also numbers the Royal Danish Air Force among its customers through a contract to supply its F-16 fighter jet and C-130 Hercules pilots with breathing oxygen).
The Waitaha Canterbury Aerospace Strategy involves a push to develop the local talent pool - and draw in more talent from outside the region, and outside New Zealand. This will involve, in part, promoting the area’s lifestyle benefits, which include housing in Christchurch that is cheaper than Auckland or Wellington.
“When you’ve got a relatively affordable mortgage, it certainly helps make the rest of life easier,” says James Powell, who cofounded Dawn Aerospace in Christchurch with his brother, Stefan.
“And it’s a small city, it’s pretty compact. It’s easy to get around. I live on the edge of the city, and it takes me 10 minutes to get to work. You know, rain, hell or shine, any time of day.”
For companies looking to set up in Christchurch, Collins noted that the NZ Space Agency has only “16 to 18 staff” compared to thousands in countries that haven’t even got to space (thanks to Rocket Lab, New Zealand is one of only 10 countries to have launched rockets into space and was third for total launches last year). It allowed for nimble policy.
Powell added, “A really big advantage is just being small as a nation is that your interaction with regulators is much, much easier. The FAA [in the US] has thousands of people. With the CAA, I know them all on a first-name basis. It’s easy to ring them up and have a discussion.”
Perhaps ironically, given its launch was held at the Air Force Museum at Wigram, where various war planes serve as a reminder of New Zealand’s ongoing role in various Western defence pacts (including a commitment for NZ to work with fellow Five Eyes countries to “protect and defend against hostile space activities”) the new initiative centres in part on a non-military focus.
“We will champion aerospace for good by prioritising non-defence applications of aerospace technology, from advancing climate monitoring and disaster response capabilities to enabling precision agriculture and enhancing global connectivity,” its strategy document says.
Defence has been a prime driver for New Zealand’s aerospace success stories.
Rocket Lab’s first major contract was with US military agency Darpa (the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency), causing a rift between founder Sir Peter Beck and his fellow director Mark Rocket, who chose to leave) and the various US Defence agencies form easily its largest line of business today. Rocket Lab even created a US-registered subsidiary dedicated to military launches, Rocket Lab National Security.
And the breakout success story of 2025, Tauranga and UK-based Syos Aerospace, earlier this year, won a $67m deal to supply the UK Ministry of Defence, with drones and says its technology is “proven in conflict zones”.
Syos founder Samuel Vye earlier told a Christchurch Aerospace Summit audience that NZ investors are too squeamish about “dual use” tech.
Collins said she saw the Waitaha strategy’s non-military focus accommodating dual-use technologies and only prohibiting the sharp end of military operations “where bombs go off”.
Mark Rocket said the new strategy would include “building opportunities for Māori, for Pasifika, for women and for all those who have been under-represented in this industry”.
“Because we know that the future of aerospace must be shaped by the full diversity of our communities.”
That’s a contrast to the direction of aerospace and other industries in the US, where SpaceX CEO and some-time Trump inner circle member Elon Musk has been one of those driving a DEI (digital, equity and inclusion) backlash.
Collins said the Waitaha strategy’s diversity targets are “fine by me. My big thing is just focus on excellence. Focus on letting everyone be treated with respect and decency. The space sector is full of people of diverse backgrounds.”
Although outside the Waitaha strategy, Rocket Lab provided something of a template for jump-starting diversity hiring.
The firm paid a standard $1000 bonus to a staff member who referred a candidate for job - if they were ultimately hired for at least six months.
Referring a successful female or minority candidate drew a $2000 bonus - which could be boosted by up to $4000 for a senior or highly-skilled role
“This strategy positions our region as not just a participant in the global aerospace sector but a leader; a place where rockets are designed, satellites are imagined and the next generation of thinkers, makers and explorers are inspired,” Aerospace Leadership Group member Rocket said at the launch.
Collins said MBIE research put New Zealand’s total aerospace sector at $2.5 billion, supporting some 17,000 jobs. Aerospace was “more globally connected than most other sectors in our economy”, Collins said.
The largest player is Rocket Lab, whose shares have just hit an all-time high of US$6.31 for a US$16.6 billion market cap. The Kiwi-American firm employs 1800 staff, including 750 in New Zealand.
Mark Rocket saw Canterbury grabbing a chunk of the industry’s further growth.
“We’ve got one Rocket Lab in New Zealand. We’d like to have at least 10, with at least two of them in Christchurch”.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.