Economic Development

Napier City Council is committed to facilitating economic development and employment growth in the city.

Council’s strategic vision is to enhance the city’s position as one of the leading commercial and tourism centre in Hawke’s Bay.  In order to achieve this vision, Council’s key economic goal is to strengthen the local economic base by expanding employment opportunities and achieving higher rates of economic growth.  Attracting new businesses and investments will increase the economic base of the community which will in turn boost standards of living and incomes. 

Council’s economic development activities include:

• Political leadership and advocacy.
• Policy and strategy development.
• Business attraction and promotion.
• Funding key local economic development and tourism organisations.
• A ‘whole of organisation’ approach for particular economic development requirements and issues such as timely resource consent approvals for job creating developments.

The Economic Development department is the lead Council unit for this activity.  Its responsibilities include:

• Revising the Hawke’s Bay Regional Economic Development Strategy.
• Developing a regional Business Attraction Strategy.
• Leading Napier and regional business promotion activities.
• Directing Council’s financial assistance to key local and regional economic development organizations and initiatives such as Business Hawke’s Bay, the Art Deco Trust and Napier City Business, Inc.
• Maintaining and enhancing the Council’s sister city relationships.
• Facilitating business development, business start-ups and mentoring in collaboration through the various organisations in the Business Hub.

Council collaborates and works closely with the Chamber of Commerce, the other Hawke’s Bay councils and the Hawke's Bay Business Hub in developing regional business attraction initiatives. For further information go to Hawke's Bay Business Hub - Home (hbbusinesshub.nz).

The Matariki Regional Economic Development Strategy was a collaborative consultative initiative between the five Hawke’s Bay councils, Iwi and businesses.  It was adopted by all the Councils and was officially launched by Minister Steven Joyce on 27 July 2016. Read the strategy document (pdf 3.5 MB).

For further information or confidential inward investment assistance, please contact Napier City Council's Economic Development Manager, Bill Roberts. 

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The Pulse Of Napier Te Pūnaha Kakapa A Ahuriri

The Pulse of Napier is a data dashboard that provides a huge range of Napier-specific social, economic and environmental measures in one dashboard.  

The dashboard includes data such as housing affordability, housing deprivation, eftpos data, pedestrian and cycling activity, mental wellbeing, business resilience, crime rates and locations and benefit claimants. Information is sourced from several different public and private entities. The great majority of the data is already publicly available. All sources are listed in the relevant dashboards.