Prominent Maori businesswoman named as a Matariki Awards finalist

Monday, 3 July 2017

Mavis Mullins has become a prominent businesswoman.

Only months after she was inducted into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame, a Dannevirke businesswoman is up for another honour.

Mavis Mullins is one of the most prominent names in Maori business. She helped establish the 2degrees mobile network, leads a successful family shearing firm and has held several key directorships, including at Landcorp and Massey University.

Now, Mullins has been named a finalist for the te tupu-a-nuku award for business and innovation at the Matariki Awards, in recognition for her work with the Poutama charitable trust. The trust provides business development services to Maori.

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After a successful first year, the Matatriki awards are back to honour and celebrate Maori achievement across a number of fields and industries in 2017.

'I'd say it's not so much for me, it's more for Poutama trust itself and the impact it's made on Maori business,' Mullins said of her nomination.

In March, she became the second Maori woman to be inducted into the Business Hall of Fame, and the first to do so while they were still alive. Te Puea Herangi was the first, when she was posthumously inducted in 1998.

Mullins said she was proud of the Poutama trust's work to foster the development of small to medium Maori businesses across New Zealand.

Such businesses were the backbone of the $50 billion Maori economy, she said.

'Our job is to provide the environment where they can succeed, but they're the one that create the magic.'

One way the trust did that was to create 'cluster groups', bringing together Maori businesses in the same industry so they can support and learn from each other, such as the group of traditional Maori food producers.

Poutama has helped them expand from selling the occasional pottle to producing regular runs of full food baskets.

The trust has also successfully helped Maori wine producers, such as the 100-year-old Wairau Valley vineyard Te Pa and award-winning Marlborough wine-makers Tohu.

The Matariki Awards ceremony is in Auckland on July 21.