Ocho: full steam ahead
DUNEDIN feels like it is on a roll at the moment. There is a sense of excitement and anticipation building.
Hot on the heels of the weekend announcement of a visionary 30year masterplan for the city’s Steamer Basin area, a revamped chocolate manufacturing enterprise is rapidly rising from the ashes of the failed Own the (Cadbury) Factory venture.
A new Own the Factory crowdfunding campaign has (within only 32 hours) raised the $2 million it required to buy out and expand the operations of boutique craft operation, the Otago Chocolate Factory — or Ocho, for short.
The smallscale privately owned company has been quietly operating from Vogel St.
The collaboration between it and the Own the Factory group (which formed to try to keep significant chocolate manufacturing in Dunedin after Mondelez announced it was closing its Dunedin Cadbury factory) is inspired.
The aim is to create a publiclyowned company producing highquality chocolate, retaining key skills in Dunedin, and putting ethical principles to the fore.
The rapid response has been heartening. There is real commitment to turning the concept into reality. There is also the intention to employ some of the former Cadbury workers once the company begins to expand.
Campaign head Jim O’Malley, a Dunedin city councillor, and Ocho founder Liz Rowe are now set on ordering new equipment and are eyeing up a move to expanded premises — at the Steamer Basin.
The whole project is testament to what can be done with vision and determination, and by ordinary Dunedinites wanting the best for their city. The same ethos is evident in the new Steamer Basin masterplan.
Dunedinites are immensely proud of their city and lifestyle, and have weathered some undeniable blows. It can be hard not to let some of those get the better of us. We can be accused of being parochial and also selfdefeating.
Positivity, just like negativity, feeds off itself, so it is great to see more than one project proudly taking shape. It is full steam ahead at the Steamer Basin, and around the redeveloped Vogel St area. Let’s keep up the momentum. Next please!
Chancellor’s challenge
A new broom sweeps clean, they say. While Dr Royden Somerville QC is definitely not new to the University of Otago, his appointment this week as chan cellor will allow the institution to make something of a fresh start in the new year after an, at times, bruising 2017.
Cutbacks across several departments have sapped morale among academic staff and students. Now the slowrolling behemoth that is the support services review finally appears to be gathering momentum, following last month’s announcement by vicechancellor Prof Harlene Hayne that 160 fulltime equivalent (FTE) general staff positions will be cut in the next year or so.
It is important such a major shakeup is done by the book, but the length of time it has taken to get to this point has made it an agonising and stressful wait for the more than 2300 FTE general staff affected.
Where Dr Somerville can make a difference is by bringing more transparency to the university council. For too long this body has been making important decisions and concluding significant amounts of its business behind closed doors, sometimes after only a few minutes in public session.
This is not an appropriate way for one of the region’s historic and most important organisations to be operating. In fact it is richly ironic in a university, where openness and freedom of speech, particularly among academics, is meant to be a core attribute that is held dear and regarded as worth fighting to retain.
Let us hope Dr Somerville will, in future, insist on more light being shed on important, farreaching, university business.