Innovation clusters mooted for Auckland

Auckland Mayor Len Brown. Photo / Dean Purcell

The Auckland Council is promoting the clustering of similar businesses as part of its economic vision for the city.

The "innovation clusters" were mapped out in the Auckland Unleashed discussion document, which lays out ideas on where the council might take the city over the next three decades.

The document stressed the importance of manufacturing to the Auckland economy and claimed it contributed 38.4 per cent to the region's GDP and produced more than half of the city's exports.

The paper, released last Thursday, is the precursor to Auckland's 30-year plan, which the council plans to finalise later this year.

It sets the ambitious goal of increasing the city's gross domestic product by more than 5 per cent a year.

As well as this, it suggests "innovation clusters" could be fostered in different parts of Auckland.

For instance, it proposes a health innovation hub around Middlemore Hospital, and one for information and communication technologies and digital media near Albany.

A marine cluster could develop near Hobsonville, and a steel cluster at Glenbrook in Franklin, it said.

All these hubs would be situated near main road or rail networks.

Head of the New Zealand Information and Communications Technology group, Brett O'Riley, helped formulate Auckland Unleashed and said the advantages of clustering were well-documented.

"Internationally, we've seen the benefits of [growing] clusters around natural industry hubs," he said.

However, O'Riley could not envision having only one centre for the tech sector, at least in the short-term.

"From a public transport point, particularly pre-second harbour crossing, it's not practical having people moving most of the way across Auckland every day [to work]. So I think you'll see a couple of locations," he said.

Along with the clustering, the deputy chairman of the council's economic forum, Cameron Brewer, said business growth would be encouraged in South Auckland.

"There's a big push for a lot of businesses to head that southern hub," Brewer said.

"It has been floated that with Auckland set to run out of 'business land' the likes of manufacturing and so forth should be contained in and around the southern part of the Auckland region,"

The paper predicts "business land" will be exhausted by 2021 if the growth rates remain steady.

As well as identifying new land that could be developed for businesses in Whenuapai, Silverdale and Drury, Auckland Unleashed proposes changing zoning rules to protect existing manufacturing and industrial sites from "residential and commercial encroachment".