Something in the water for Bay entrepreneurs

Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck is this year's New Zealand EY Entrepreneur of the Year winner.

Three of the last four EY Entrepreneur of the Year award winners in New Zealand have had a Hawke's Bay connection.

The latest is this year's winner, Rocket Lab founder and chief executive Peter Beck who will represent New Zealand on the world stage at Monaco.

The company is due to launch test flights from Mahia Peninsula by the end of the year for its satellite business and commercial launches are planned from early-to-mid 2017.

Mahia was chosen because of little air traffic for its 1 million-horsepower Electron rocket and Mr Beck said the only commercial flight Rocket Lab has to work around is one to Chile.

Rocket Lab's main operation, for now, is based in Auckland but its Mahia operation is expected to boost the local economy. Every concrete truck from Gisborne and Wairoa was used for the concrete foundation of the hangar and launch pad.

Mr Beck was a toolmaker at Fisher & Paykel in Auckland before working on rockets with government-owned Industrial Research Limited (IRL), now Callaghan Innovation.

He set up Rocket Lab in 2006 and through IRL met backer Sir Stephen Tindall.

Substantial United States funding was also received for the satellite launching business with the Government investing $25m over five years.

Mr Beck will represent New Zealand against more than 60 national winners for the title of EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year in Monte Carlo in June.

Last year's New Zealand EY Entrepreneur of the Year was Progressive Meats' founder Craig Hickson.

He started Progressive with wife Penny in 1981 with a staff of just six. It now employs about 300 people.

Progressive is a contract meat processor - it does not purchase stock - and its engineering is just as innovative as its business model, including a world-first beef installation that dresses the carcass upside down.

Thanks to investments in other meat processors the NBR Rich Lister is taking increasingly bigger chunks from the heels of the major New Zealand meat companies and in 2015 bought a meat processing plant in Wales.

Havelock North businessman, Rich Lister and Xero CEO Rod Drury won the New Zealand EY award in 2013.

A serial entrepreneur, Mr Drury founded cloud-based accounting software company Xero in 2006 and it was NZX-listed the following year.

It first focused on the New Zealand market and product innovation before taking on overseas market incumbents.

Now also listed in Australia, it leads the New Zealand, Australian, and United Kingdom internet-accounting markets.

It has offices in New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States where it is making inroads against market-leader Intuit.

It was twice named most innovative growth company by influential American business magazine Forbes as it leverages its "beautiful software" to increasingly win market share through innovation and extensive partnering with other software companies.