The only non-veterinary specialist placed by the New Zealand Government at the centre of live export operations — commercial acuity, regulatory authority, and end-to-end operational experience across every major NZ voyage.
The Advisory
A career built inside New Zealand Government live export policy and operations — the only person in that function without a veterinary background. The focus was always commercial: vessel economics, port logistics, voyage planning, mortality as a business exposure, and what regulators will and will not accept.
Before that, a decade of operational change management across healthcare and commercial clients in Australia, alongside direct experience in pastoral farming. The combination of commercial instinct, systems thinking, and regulatory fluency across those contexts is uncommon in this industry.
What This Has Produced
The digital infrastructure governing every commercial live export departure from New Zealand — designed and operated from the ground up. A complete regulatory rebuild following a major incident at sea in 2020, covering vessel standards, mortality reporting, and voyage approval processes. National training architecture for animal welfare compliance enforcement, deployed across all government regions.
A structured vessel classification framework — a three-tier system assessing individual livestock ships across welfare-critical technical systems, including ventilation, water supply, penning design, structural attributes, and crew standards. This involved technical assessments of multiple vessels in commercial operation and the development of a stakeholder consultation framework to support implementation.
Beyond live export specifically: operational system design under sustained cross-agency pressure during a national biosecurity response, and a decade of programme and change management across healthcare and commercial sectors in Australia. Live export problems rarely sit within a single discipline — they involve vessel operations, port logistics, mortality risk, and political exposure simultaneously. The breadth of this background is the point.
For Australian and Brazilian Operators
Australia and Brazil together account for the majority of global live cattle exports by sea. Both operate in environments shaped by welfare scrutiny, shifting regulation, and the practical realities of long-haul voyages.
New Zealand built and stress-tested a compliance and operational framework under a level of public and political pressure that most markets have not encountered. That experience — across voyage systems, vessel assessment, regulatory design, and operational risk — is directly transferable.
This is not about selling a template. The starting point is understanding your operations, your regulatory environment, and whether there is genuine basis for collaboration. If there is value to unlock, it will be apparent quickly.
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