Semisi Hutchison

After a BA BCom at Auckland, I began a career in sales and marketing with a well-known financial services company, Western Union. We operated throughout the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand.

Six years' later, I moved to a private equity firm based in Fort Lane in the CBD, where my responsibilities were focused in Fiji and Timor L'Este.

An Overseas Experience or OE saw some enjoyable time spent in Europe and South America. Upon return to Aotearoa, my first business was established. A successful aged care provider based in Auckland. We secured ACC HCSS and RSS contracts as well as a large private client base.

Independent Care was sold in 2017, which allowed my wife and I to focus on establishing Little & Brave Eco Nappies that launched at the Auckland Baby Show in 2018.

Little & Brave Eco Nappies offers New Zealand's only plastic-free and commercially-compostable nappy option. Until the end of 2022, we also offered an in-house collections and commercial composting operation based in Penrose - called Eco Circle. When we closed Eco Circle, with the intention of expanding it nationwide or at least multi-region-wide, Little & Brave had over 1,100-metric tonnes of organic waste from landfill. We are extremely proud of that fact.

Little & Brave offers customers the opportunity to minimise pollutants from reaching landfill, even if our products do in fact end up in landfill, we are confident that they will produce considerably less damage to the environment and our people than any conventional disposable nappy.

We are looking forward to expanding our offerings into the Pacific. This is more than just the plastic-free commercially-compostable products, we have several years' practical experience composting our own products and effectively producing nutrient-dense bio fertiliser. This fertiliser can either be used as an effective soil reconditioning agent or as a fertilising agent to aid agriculture and horticulture.

What we can bring to the New Zealand Pacific Business Council is -five years' business experience in financial services. investment assessment, aged care and fast-moving consumer and sustainable consumer goods; as well as a strong desire to make the Pacific stronger economically and environmentally.

I look forward to working with you all.