China's automakers using Red Sea route shortcut -while others take the slow boat to Europe
Chinese automakers are shipping cars to Europe through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, nearly two years after the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen started attacking vessels in the critical Middle East transit route.
Other automakers are still shipping cars from Asia by way of a much longer, and expensive,
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NZ Herald
5 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Jamie Beaton's new venture Concord Visa aims to simplify US visa pathways for Kiwis
Concord charges between US$6500 ($10,912) and US$10,000 to shepherd an individual through a O-1 application, which Beaton says can potentially be approved in just over a month ('Concord' is a reference to speed). The price is pitched as being around 40% the rate charged by a law firm specialising in immigration (the traditional route). The US$10,000 tier offers more assistance 'building your profile'. Chance meeting As with Crimson, Concord was born in part out of Beaton's own experience, after earning the first of his (now half dozen) US post-graduate degrees at Princeton. 'When I first came to the US, I was on the F1, the student visa. And I wasn't really sure how one stays in the US post-degree for an extended period of time,' Beaton said. 'Getting an O-1 visa was totally random. I bumped into a fellow Kiwi entrepreneur, Divya Dhar, who mentioned she's secured a green card through this mystical process. After going through the application, I managed to land my visa, enabling me to build Crimson at full speed." Beaton said even with the serendipity of meeting Dhar, it was a slog, with around 200 pages of paperwork, and, as with trying to penetrate the Ivy League, it can be hard for a novice to navigate the best path. He sees a 'massive information barrier', now compounded by a growing AI slop of misinformation online. The New Zealander still has an O-1, today, which he's renewed several times. He says once you've secured it, the visa is relatively straightforward to renew. Beaton co-founded Concord with Kevin Park, a fellow Auckland University grad who is familiar with the ins and outs of immigration through his former role as Crimson's shock trooper, setting up beachheads in a series of countries during the firm's early days. "Trump is throwing visa bombs left, right and centre,' says Jamie Beaton (left), here with Concord Visa co-founder Kevin Park. 'Crimson went from one country to 20 really fast, with plenty of messy chaos, with Kevin and many other great folks leading the charge to go through that baptism by fire.' 'Trump throwing visa bombs' There's plenty of messy chaos in the US now, of course – though these days it's more likely to emanate from the White House. Beaton says Concord recently helped a crypto entrepreneur from China gain a visa to build his firm in the US. 'It's really exciting to see cases like this, especially as Trump is throwing visa bombs left, right and centre,' Beaton says. 'A lot of our families are very keen to have clarity as to what a multi-year journey looks like in America or other countries, and this is really designed to be that next step in the Crimson journey for them.' Park says it's important to get all your paperwork correct. But, as with trying to get into Harvard or Yale, it's also a matter of putting together the right 'narrative' for the talent-based O-1, which is often restricted to around 10,000 people each year. Park says Concord offers more than 10 types of visas, including those in various skills shortage categories, and will match a candidate to the best type. His pitch is that traditional immigration advisers are often used to dealing with the requirements of big corporates. He and Beaton are more savvy about the potential quirks and complications of smaller firms, like Silicon Valley startups, where a funding round or change of ownership can pull the rug out from under an E2 visa (a business investment and employee transfer visa that has been another traditionally popular way for Kiwis to set up shop in the US). A venture capital round that brings in a range of international investors would see a US-based firm majority-owned offshore, and an E2 visa holder suddenly asked to leave the country within 60 days, Park says. The firm also helps with immigration into Australia, Britain and New Zealand. Beaton says the business is a natural extension of Crimson, which has helped 'several thousand' students secure F1 visas. Although only up and running for a few months, Concord has already helped more than 100 people secure US visas, Beaton and Park say. Their hero client is Auckland brand-tracking start-up Tracksuit, which has been pushing into the US after a $42 million raise this year. Inside help It also helped the East Auckland-raised Wayne Zhou secure an O-1 visa for his move from Australia to the US as his Silicon Valley-based startup staged a US$20m Series A raise. Macleans College old boy Zhou has quite the backstory. He enrolled at the University of Sydney but was only two years into a seven-year path to a Doctor of Dentistry ('my immigrant parents' dream') before he dropped out. Zhou had been running a recruitment consultancy as a side hustle. 'I was basically helping my friends get jobs in the best industries; in finance, investment banking and professional services,' he says. 'Ruler', as he called his careers platform, blossomed during his second year, as the 2020 Covid lockdown hit – to the point where he left university. Crimson acquired Ruler in 2022, and Zhou stayed on until mid-2023, until striking out on his own again to form a fintech called Verve. 'It flopped,' he says. A year ago, he founded Paraform, 'a recruiting marketplace that connects companies with a network of specialised recruiters to fill their hardest roles'. With backing from the founders of Canva, among others, his start-up quickly grew to 40 staff, with plans for 100 by year's end. It's a roller-coaster story, especially for someone yet to hit 30. But how should it be framed in a bid for an O-1 talent visa? Zhou says the Concord consultant assigned to him had previously worked on the other side of the fence, where she had conducted more than 10,000 visa interviews while with the US Embassy in Australia. 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.
NZ Herald
5 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Global ‘mining mafia' feeds China's appetite for gold, investigation shows
As part of a strategic effort to reduce reliance on the US dollar, insulate itself from potential United States sanctions and build its own capacity to influence the international monetary system, China is procuring gold at a voracious pace. This drive has fuelled and facilitated a surge in illicit gold mining across the Global South, inflicting a trail of environmental destruction from Indonesia to Ghana to French Guiana, a Washington Post investigation found. The Post examination of China's role in the booming trade in illicit gold is based on a review of satellite imagery, trade data, public records, and dozens of interviews with gold researchers, law enforcement and government officials across three continents. In Indonesia, where the proliferation of illicit mining has been among the most widespread and least studied, the Post obtained internal government documents and visited half a dozen secluded gold-mining communities being transformed by Chinese-led operations. Chinese workers at these locations declined to speak to the Post, but Chinese mining operators in Indonesia said in interviews that investment in the country's gold sector is spiking. In videos aimed at investors on Chinese social media, Chinese miners advertise 'free and easy' access to Indonesia's vast gold deposits. In May, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned that organised crime was embedding itself so deeply in gold supply chains that it poses a 'serious global threat'. As Chinese demand drives gold prices above US$3000 per ounce, drug cartels, terrorists, and mercenary groups are deepening their involvement in the sector, UNODC said. Almost all these actors work in some capacity with Chinese mining concerns, which are present from 'mine to market' and have the greatest ability to work in the most unexploited locations, according to those who study the gold sector. Many illicit gold operations are being financed and operated directly by Chinese private investors who appear to be operating with little oversight or repercussion from Chinese authorities, investigators say. This has drawn allegations from gold-rich countries that Beijing is permitting the ransacking of gold deposits abroad, enabling a rapidly mutating trade that UN officials warn is propping up a range of other criminal activities. Makeshift tents at an illegal gold mine set up by Chinese investors in the village of Sekotong in Indonesia. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Chinese officials have pushed back against these allegations, including the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, Tong Defa, who in June said it was a 'significant injustice' to blame Beijing for the spread of illegal gold mining. The Chinese Foreign Ministry and the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters did not respond to detailed questions from the Post. The Chinese Embassy in Washington said it was 'not aware' of the allegations made by gold-rich countries about China's role and declined to comment. 'Chinese networks have become deeply involved in the illicit gold trade,' said David Soud, a minerals analyst who has written reports on gold for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 'Much of the gold they mine or otherwise acquire goes to China via highly opaque supply chains.' This is routinely done without the payment of local taxes or royalties, officials and analysts say. Illicit Chinese syndicates, according to Soud and other investigators, operate differently from both traditional, artisanal gold miners and industrial, legal mining companies, including those from China. A woman sifts through crushed ore for gold deposits on Sumbawa. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post While artisanal miners use little to no machinery, illicit Chinese operators employ crushers, excavators and other tools to extract at a scale that rivals industrial mines. Unlike industrial mines, analysts say, the syndicates operate without regard to environmental, health and safety regulations, degrading forests and rivers at rates not seen before in many communities. In the sites where they operate, Chinese syndicates are also driving a transition from using mercury for processing to cyanide – a more effective but also more hazardous process when employed without strict controls, according to mining experts. 'This system has gotten much more complex and much more organised,' said Brad Brooks-Rubin, a former US State Department official who worked on mineral supply chains in the Biden Administration. 'The Western policy world has largely missed what has happened.' The operations of PT Amman Mineral International, a legal Indonesian-owned mine on western Sumbawa. Illicit mining is spreading on the eastern side of the island. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post In a sign that the issue is just now emerging as a policy concern, the Trump Administration in March for the first time designated gold among the minerals vital to the US as part of an executive order to 'reduce our reliance on foreign nations'. In a hearing a few days later, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, Representative Chris Smith (Republican-New Jersey), described China and its mining interests as the 'greatest beneficiaries' of the illicit gold trade. Beijing has rebuffed appeals from regulators in gold-rich countries to help crack down on Chinese-run mining syndicates and opted out of multilateral efforts to counter the underground trade, officials and advocates said in interviews. According to a Post review of government statements, court records and news reports, authorities in at least 15 gold-rich countries have brought cases against Chinese nationals and companies over illicit gold mining since the start of 2024. – In Ghana, Africa's top gold-exporting country, officials say Chinese syndicates have laid waste to swathes of Ghana's west and south, and are now moving to the country's north. 'The Chinese Government is doing nothing about it,' said Ghanaian lawmaker Tiah Abdul-Kabiru Mahama, calling the Chinese Communist Party 'complicit' in the destruction. Hundreds of Chinese nationals have been arrested just in recent months. Ghana has tried seeking the help of Chinese authorities, but to little avail, Lands and Natural Resources Minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said in an interview. Miners who are deported are routinely able to find their way back into the country, Buah said, adding, 'It has been tough'. – In Indonesia, Asia's biggest gold producer after China, officials at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources say they receive reports almost daily of illegal gold mines across the country's sprawling archipelago, the biggest of which are linked to Chinese nationals, based on preliminary investigations. In one high-profile case last year, Indonesian authorities asked the Chinese Embassy to help identify its citizens and assist with the probe. 'They were not co-operative,' said an Indonesian official. The Chinese suspects fled Indonesia, the official added. - In French Guiana, an overseas department of France in South America, Chinese investors form a 'crucial logistical chain' in an illicit gold market that the French military spends tens of millions of dollars annually to combat, said the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS), a defence think-tank funded in part by the French Government, in a 2023 report. 'The involvement of Chinese players,' FRS said, 'is part of a global context of resource capture and predation, encouraged or facilitated by the Chinese government.' Mystery holdings China has been among the world's biggest buyers of gold for over a decade, according to data from the World Gold Council, a trade association. But it's a mystery, analysts say, as to how much gold it actually has – and where it comes from. The Chinese Communist Party is heavily involved in acquiring gold for the state, whether through the People's Bank of China, brokers or via industrial policies that have encouraged retail buying and incentivised gold mining abroad, gold and financial analysts say. In 2017, Song Xin, then president of the China Gold Association, said the Belt and Road Initiative, China's US$1 trillion ($1.68t) global infrastructure programme, is 'also a golden road'. From 2000 to 2024, Chinese state-owned creditors inked 85 loan commitments for gold extraction and processing projects across the Global South, according to data provided to the Post by AidData, a research lab at William and Mary in Virginia. It's now easier for Chinese miners to find work outside China than at home, said Zeng Shanyue, a Chinese gold-mining investor based in Indonesia. Many of those going abroad originate from the southern province of Guangxi, which has a long tradition of mining. But businessmen from elsewhere in China, like his province of Zhejiang, are also moving in. 'Everyone,' Zeng said, 'is mining'. A ute carries gold ore for processing at an illegal gold mine in eastern Indonesia. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post To China's strategic thinkers, it is not enough. 'China's gold reserves are still insufficient and should be increased further,' said Liu Ping, a senior CCP official, in March at the annual meeting of China's top political advisory body. Gold is 'a crucial tool' for the country's national security, said Zhang Zhigang, another party official. While many countries are not fully transparent with their gold holdings, there are exceptionally large discrepancies between what Chinese authorities say they have and independent assessments from trade groups and banks. In a September 2024 research document, Goldman Sachs said its estimates of the Chinese central bank's gold purchases have been in certain months as much as 60 tonnes higher than the central bank declared. Over the course of 2024, said gold analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs at Money Metals, the People's Bank of China covertly bought 570 tonnes of gold, and it has now accumulated more than twice the gold it says it has. The scale of China's acquisitions is changing the gold market, Nieuwenhuijs told the Post. 'And the reason is that they really see the gold as an alternative to the dollar,' he said. The People's Bank of China did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, China's General Administration of Customs said it follows 'international conventions' on compiling and publishing information. 'China's gold import and export data is open and transparent,' it said. Given gold's strategic value, it's natural for China's holdings to be 'classified', said Zhao Qingming, an adjunct professor at the School of Finance of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. 'No country openly discloses whether its gold reserves are acquired domestically or internationally, or how much is sourced from each channel,' Zhao said. The problem, researchers say, is that this lack of transparency increasingly conceals large quantities of gold that was mined illegally. Martin, a local gold miner in the village of Taliwang on Sumbawa, said he has watched warily as Chinese mining operators spread in nearby communities. 'If they enter here, we can't compete,' he said. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Conservative estimates place the value of the illicit gold sector at more than US$30 billion or 400 tonnes a year. A study released in 2024 by the non-profit Swissaid found that gold smuggling out of Africa doubled between 2012 and 2022. Individually, unsanctioned mines may be smaller than legal ones. But aggregated over a country, over multiple countries – 'it's a massive, massive amount', said Pete Chirico, associate director of the US Geological Survey's Florence Bascom Geoscience Centre, which provides scientific assessments of resource extraction to the US government. Once smelted, illegal gold is virtually impossible to differentiate from legal gold – and equally as valuable to the world's biggest buyer. 'If you have a strategic interest in gold, you don't want to just rely on the industrial gold-mining sector,' Chirico said. 'You're trying to mop up gold wherever it is.' 'People's mining' Lalu Adimiyat, 40, looked out the window of a muddied Toyota SUV as it bumped along the pockmarked slopes of his village in eastern Indonesia. Stepping out into blustering winds, he caught the eye of a few local men peeking out from tented shafts. He nodded stiffly and turned away. It wasn't safe to stay long, he muttered. Chinese gold-mining investors began arriving here on Lombok island, an hour's boat ride from the holiday destination of Bali, in 2022, said Lalu, a community activist. In his village of Sekotong, locals had mined small amounts of gold for years, scaling the hills on motorbikes and using hand tools to scoop out gold-mottled ores that they sold to traders in the valleys. Indonesian workers move gold ore on the island of Sumbawa, where Chinese mining operators are becoming dominant. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Indonesian authorities allowed this as long as it remained small-scale, providing permits to citizens for what is called in Indonesian 'tambang rakyat', or 'people's mining'. When Chinese investors came, however, they came with excavators, crushers and pumps that stunned local miners, Lalu recalled. The Chinese built their own processing facilities at the top of hills, installing sprinkler systems to douse ore with cyanide – a chemical that local miners had never used before. They brought in towering Chinese-made mills with rollers that spun 160 times a minute. Soon, Chinese investors were moving quantities of gold in a single day that would take locals months or even years to extract, Lalu said. 'We felt defeated,' he recalled. After several clashes, hostilities boiled over in August 2024 when villagers set a dormitory for Chinese miners on fire. National authorities arrived to find one of the biggest illegal gold mines ever uncovered in Indonesia – an operation that spread across the size of 184 American football fields, producing gold with an estimated market value of US$5.5 million per month. 'I never expected that,' remembered Dian Patria, 58, who inspected the site in October. A plain-speaking, moustachioed bureaucrat in Indonesia's anti-corruption commission, Dian said he has watched Chinese illicit networks spread across Indonesia, corrupting offices from village councils to national ministries, amid a broader expansion in Chinese investment. In the country's far-flung eastern provinces, which he oversees and where mineral deposits are concentrated, the most coveted prize has been gold. 'They are robbing us,' Dian lamented from his office in Jakarta. 'Openly.' Indonesian officials say they are aware of dozens of large-scale illegal gold-mining operations on Sumbawa. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post In previous decades, when American companies such as Newmont dominated gold mining in Indonesia, authorities could rely partly on US and international anti-corruption regulations, such as the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, to stave off excessive graft. Not so with Chinese operators, who face few barriers to engaging in corruption abroad, Dian said. Indonesia has stepped up efforts to find and prosecute illegal mining syndicates, earlier this year opening a law enforcement arm within its minerals ministry and increasing enforcement against cyanide smuggling rings. The bribing of officials, however, means that even when regulators believe they have found damning evidence, their superiors may not be inclined to prosecute, Dian said. Indonesian authorities have reported major illicit gold operations run by Chinese networks in at least four provinces over the past year. None have led to convictions. In one case in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, authorities found a mine that stretched over 1.5km and employed as many as 80 people. Chinese nationals were brought to trial but then abruptly acquitted – a decision that the Indonesian Judicial Commission later said was marred by ethical breaches and misconduct by judges. In June, one of the Chinese defendants still in Indonesia was retried and given a sentence of three years in prison and a fine of US$1.8m. Haruki Agustina, director of climate change mitigation at the Indonesian Environment Ministry, said she thought the punishment was insufficient given the mine's damage to the environment, particularly with regard to the unregulated use of cyanide. 'Way, way too low,' she said in an interview. Villagers have long fished on Lake Lebo in Taliwang. Now, they say it is becoming contaminated with chemicals like mercury and cyanide from illegal gold mines. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post On Lombok, internal Indonesian government documents obtained by the Post say the illegal mine in Sekotong encroached into protected forest area, and operations were carried out by three companies – two led by Chinese nationals and one by Indonesians – none of which had the requisite permits. In addition, the documents say, there are dozens more illicit mines on Lombok and its neighbouring islands that the Government is aware of. The Sekotong investigation, which was handed over to police last year, has stalled, said a senior official at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, adding that the reasons have not been shared with the ministry. The police did not respond to requests for comment. When Post reporters visited Sekotong in May, the police lines set up last year had been torn down. Trucks brimming with gold ore trundled along cliff edges, and the mines appeared operational. Lalu sucked his teeth as he raised his phone to take a video. 'No, no, no accountability,' he said. Beijing's 'plundering' In January, hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrated against what they called the 'plundering' of the country's gold by Chinese operators. Asked about the demonstrations, Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, said, 'The Chinese Government always asks Chinese citizens and companies overseas to strictly observe local laws and regulations.' Officials in gold-rich countries, however, say Beijing has done little to enforce that sentiment. Chinese authorities have been unco-operative in efforts to identify and deter Chinese nationals responsible for illicit gold mining, according to international investigators and officials in Ghana and Indonesia. Chinese authorities have also withheld data that could help quantify and track illicit gold flows, and are noticeably absent from multilateral discussions on the topic, researchers say. In May, for example, at the 2025 OECD conference on responsible mineral supply chains in Paris – widely seen as the most important annual forum on the topic – a small Chinese delegation spoke about industrial mining but did not participate in discussions on illicit flows, attendees said. In these conversations, 'China is the missing elephant in the room', said Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at the International Peace Information Service, a Belgium-based institute focused on mining in the African Great Lakes region. 'We talk about them,' he said. 'They are not there.' Futile resistance Indonesian villagers on Sumbawa have done artisanal mining for decades, using hand tools to extract and refine gold. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Artisanal mining in the village of Lantung dates back decades, locals say. But large-scale mining only began three years ago, when a middle-aged Chinese man known to villagers as 'Mr Xi' began striking deals with smallholders to dig on their land. He promised compensation that did not materialise, villagers said. But attempts to protest have had little effect. Runoff from the gaping pits on the mountaintops is killing crops. Every week, it seems, cattle downstream of the mine's cyanide pools drop dead, locals say. 'Everything you see here, that hill and that hill and that one. … Everything you see that is stripped land is the Chinese,' said Sabuddin, a local villager. Wearing a long-sleeved shirt that hung loose on his scrawny frame, Sabuddin, 49, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, stood perched on a jagged bluff. He said he did 'rakyat' mining, working with a hammer and pickax. He dug sometimes in areas like this one, which Chinese operators had excavated and then abandoned, Sabuddin said. But he had never mined for the Chinese. 'They work illegally,' he explained. 'I don't want to be involved in all that.' Yet, looking across the jungles he'd trekked through as a boy, he sometimes felt a sense of awe at the scale of the Chinese operation, he said. He pointed out a building with zinc roofs on the opposing crag – a dormitory for workers who guard the illicit mine. Even when night falls, the lights in those buildings don't turn off, he said. The crushers keep whirring; the excavators keep inching forward. Locals couldn't run an operation like this, Sabuddin said. 'No,' he continued. 'Only the Chinese.'
Otago Daily Times
a day ago
- Otago Daily Times
Multi-course tournament still vision
Millbrook might have hosting rights for the New Zealand Open for seven more years but the plan to return to a multi-course tournament has not altered. Organisers last week revealed, at the same time an economic impact report was published, the Open was to stay at the Arrowtown resort until 2032. However, tournament director Michael Glading has confirmed the vision remains to eventually expand the footprint of the tournament, along the lines of the years it was co-hosted by Millbrook and The Hills. "Millbrook share our vision, which is getting to a three-course model," Glading told the Otago Daily Times . "Whether that three-course model is two at Millbrook and one somewhere else, or whether it's three different courses ... I think Millbrook are very open. "Obviously their own resort is their No 1 priority, but they've also always had a 'what's best for Queenstown' mentality. "Millbrook will remain, if you like, the centre point. If we go to three courses, Millbrook will be the one that features the final round. "Millbrook are a part of that decision-making process. They are very keen to keep growing, and ultimately, the next phase of growth is the third course." Glading and tournament chairman John Hart have talked previously about the tournament, which attracts a giant field of 156 professional golfers matched with 156 paying amateurs in the pro-am format, expanding across multiple courses to bring in even more commercial benefits and ease the stresses on tee-off times. The assumption is Jack's Point and eventually the new Hogans Gully development would be strong contenders, while plenty would be delighted if The Hills, set for significant redevelopment, came back on the schedule. "We would love to have The Hills involved again, and I think they'll be very open to it," Glading said. "They're going to be doing some remodelling, and that's going to take them out of action for certainly two to three years, I think, while they do that work. "Once that's done, the door's very much open for that to happen. And we maintain a really strong and close relationship with The Hills, as we have all the way through. "I think it's indicative of Queenstown that people really want to work together." Glading was heartened by an economic impact report that showed the 2025 Open generated $12.3 million in net economic impact for New Zealand and over $23m in direct economic impact for the Queenstown region, and featured a 48% growth in attendance figures with 34,199 fans. Sustainable, ongoing growth for the $2m tournament was important, and he felt it was hitting a sweet spot as an upper-end event on the Asian and Australasian tours. Glading has been keeping a close eye on the release of other schedules as he starts work on building the professional field for 2026. He will do some recruiting work on the Asian and Japan tours in November before heading to Australia. The dream remains to get New Zealand star Ryan Fox back to his home Open but it is virtually impossible while he has top-line PGA Tour events to play in the February-March period. Glading has been reflecting on the massive role the late Michael Hill had on the Queenstown Lakes area becoming the home of the New Zealand Open. Hill helped rescue the open when The Hills hosted it for the first time in 2007, and later set the foundation for the shift to a pro-am format when he enlisted Glading to come up with a new tournament in the open's absence. "My general favourite memories are all around his sense of humour. "I just loved his sense of humour. He had a very dry, witty sense of humour, which I always got to enjoy. "On a more serious note, he also had a vision for Queenstown and for this tournament, and he always thought outside the square. "Michael's initial support, I guess, for what we've now established ... I mean, it would never be what it is without his support, both financially and morally." It was early days but Glading said the New Zealand Open would be doing something to "tip our hat" to Hill at the tournament next year.
