The Whanganui Chamber of Commerce and Industry has been hard at work over the past few years, building our value to businesses and increasing our membership. Thanks for your support! If you haven’t joined us yet but you want to become a member you can sign up here.

Our enthusiastic Board and Chief Executive are developing great opportunities for local businesses to connect with each other and to tell their own and each other’s stories. This includes networking sessions such a Business After 5 pm events (BA5s), our monthly Breakfast of Champions, Manufacturing Centre of Excellence Tours, Whanganui Women in Business sessions, and special lunchtime speakers.

We also provide a wide variety of business training sessions throughout the year and we advocate on behalf of business to local and central government. For example, our submission to the council’s 2018 plan saw commercial rates for the animal control activity decrease from around 30% to less than 10%. This is a small win but money businesses save on services that dont apply to them is money they can invest in their businesses and in Whanganui. We think that is important. If you have an issue that you would like us to help with, please get in touch.

Whanganui is currently in an exciting growth phase and so are we at the Chamber. Our networking events are warm and inclusive and have attendees from a wide cvariety of businesses, including professional services, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, education and the creative sector. Getting such a mix of different sectors in the room together not only provides local businesses with access to potential customers and suppliers but also encourages innovation through idea sharing and new perspectives. It can be hard to attend an event for the first time – even the most successful ceos can get sweaty palmed at the thought of it – but the research says you should do it and we can promise you a fun event.

So, please feel free to join us at an event soon and get in touch if you are feeling a little nervous about it – we take special care of newcomers and our wonderful members are there because they want to meet you too! Check us out on Facebook and Instagram (@whanganuichamber) for news about what’s coming up next.