Price calls for Launch New Zealand to lure global R&D

Australian entrepreneur Peter Price has called for a "Launch New Zealand" programme to attract more international product development and early commercial launches to New Zealand. He made the proposal as his femcare venture Tazi chose the country for its first commercial launch.

Price argued that New Zealand is missing out on a larger share of global research and commercialisation spending by focusing too heavily on locally owned businesses, rather than trying to win mobile research, intellectual property and early-stage product work from overseas companies.

His intervention comes amid weak growth in business research and development spending. New Zealand business R&D spending rose 0.4% to NZD $4.1 billion in 2025, while total national spending across business, government and higher education was about 1.54% of GDP, below the OECD average of roughly 2.7%.

At New Zealand's current economic scale, matching that OECD benchmark would equate to almost NZD $5 billion in additional annual R&D activity. Price said the gap showed the need for a broader strategy to draw international companies into the country at the commercialisation stage.

"New Zealand already has a $4 billion business R&D economy, but the latest figures suggest growth is effectively flat. At the same time, there is a global R&D economy worth trillions of dollars every year. The question should not only be how New Zealand companies are encouraged to spend more, but also how we persuade global companies to undertake more of their research, product development, testing and early commercialisation here," said Peter Price, Chief Executive Officer of Tazi.

Policy shift

Price said innovation policy should be less concerned with where a company originated and more focused on attracting or retaining higher-value work such as research, design, prototyping, intellectual property and product launch activity.

He pointed to the country's investor migration settings as evidence that New Zealand can build targeted offers for internationally mobile capital. In his view, the same logic could be applied to mobile R&D and commercialisation projects.

"We already support New Zealand companies knowing that if they become globally successful, some manufacturing and operational activity may eventually move offshore," Price said.

"If the highest-value parts of that company remain in research, design, intellectual property and commercialisation, then logically we should also be competing to attract those same activities from international companies. The objective should be to make New Zealand an innovation hub, not simply an incubator for New Zealand-owned businesses."

The proposed "Launch New Zealand" scheme would give companies a single point of entry into the local system, linking research providers, universities, consumer testing, compliance advice, distributors, professional services and other partners. Price said the model would rely not on lighter regulation, but on packaging existing resources more clearly for international businesses.

Why New Zealand

Price said New Zealand's size, often seen as a constraint, could work in its favour for product testing and early launch decisions. He argued that companies introducing unfamiliar products do not always need immediate scale, and may instead benefit from being close to consumers and getting clearer feedback before entering much larger markets.

Tazi's launch strategy reflects that argument. The business selected New Zealand ahead of Australia and other overseas markets after a five-year development programme in the country involving a reported NZD $5 million in research spending and product testing with almost 1,000 New Zealand women.

"If a company anywhere in the world has developed something new and needs a sophisticated market where it can test the product, stay close to consumers, understand adoption barriers and refine the commercial model, New Zealand should be one of the first countries it considers," Price said.

He said a smaller market can offer more direct insight into why consumers adopt or reject a new product, which can be harder to isolate in very large markets.

"New Zealand is never going to offer the consumer scale of the United States or Europe, or the manufacturing capacity of some Asian economies," Price said.

"But product innovation happens in stages, and maximum scale is not necessarily what a company needs at every stage. When you are introducing something consumers have never encountered before, the ability to stay close to those consumers, understand what they are saying and respond quickly can initially be more valuable than access to tens of millions of potential customers."

Market conditions

New Zealand has a population of about 5.36 million, internet access in more than 90% of households, and a wider research and development workforce estimated at around 68,000 people. Price said those conditions, together with an English-speaking market, established research infrastructure and a developed services sector, support the case for a more deliberate international pitch.

He also noted that overseas sources already account for about 16% of funding for business R&D carried out in New Zealand, suggesting there is an existing base of foreign-backed innovation activity to build on.

For Tazi, New Zealand's environmental reputation also influenced the launch decision, given the company's reusable product positioning. Price said the structure of the local sanitary products market should provide a useful test case because both applicator and non-applicator formats are already established among consumers.

The company will use the launch to study whether women are willing to change established purchasing and usage habits when presented with a reusable applicator product in a mainstream retail setting.

"The real commercial test comes when consumers encounter something unfamiliar independently and decide whether it offers enough value to change an established behaviour. That is what we want to understand in New Zealand before scaling internationally, and it is exactly the kind of role the country could play for more global innovators."

For more information, visit mytazi.co.nz.