Mobile app developing company, Pushpay Holdings Limited, has parted ways with executive director Eliot Crowther, who leaves the firm he co-founded. The departure has seen $100 million secured to let Crowther go.

After intentions in January to list in the U.S market and expand its shareholder base, the move has caused a decision to cease its U.S market listing for the time being.  

Crowther’s 24.8 million shares were sold at $4.04 a piece, and Crowther will resign as director effectively on June 21 and as an employee on June 31, according to an article on Scoop. 

Recruiting software company Weirdly is expanding to Australia for its next phase of growth.

The Kiwi tech company partners with New Zealand employers, The Warehouse Group, NZME, Bunnings, and BNZ, and is looking to follow in the footsteps of fellow tech companies Xero and Vend. 

Weirdly CEO and co-founder Dale Clareburt says, “We’ve been seeing a huge spike in approaches from big Australian companies over the past year so it’s a natural step to establish a base there”.

“There’s a real appetite for tools like ours that help these big companies manage the huge volume of applications they get and make the application experience a lot nicer for candidates”

The new Australian presence, based in Sydney will be headed up by Sascha Gray; an employment industry mainstay who previously led the growth of Hired,Inc in the APAC region.

Clareburt says that niche experience was exactly what Weirdly was looking for in their new VP of Sales.

“We’re chuffed to get someone of Sascha’s ability and experience on board. She’s exactly the right person to help grow Weirdly’s presence in the Australian market”.

With Gray leading growth for Australia, Clareburt continues to increase Weirdly’s presence in the USA while the product development continues in New Zealand.

New joint venture Global Pac Technologies has launched a hi-tech automated robotic apple packer to help meet the global challenges of processing increasing quantities of fresh produce.

Global Pac also has a wider mandate to seek out new technologies that will assist the fresh produce processing industry worldwide.

New Zealand firm Jenkins Group Limited has joined forces with US-based Van Doren Sales, Inc., to sell the packer into the global market under a new joint venture GlobalPac Technologies. The first product, the Aporo packer was developed by New Zealand agritech business Robotics Plus. 

Van Doren Sales President Bret Pittsinger says Global Pac has the ability to move quickly on solutions that could have global implications.

Pittsinger says, “The combined efforts and communication between our businesses will allow us to stay close to the customer and react quickly. There is a major opportunity to reduce some of the pressures on production for the global apple packing industry, and in other fresh fruit and produce sectors,”.

He says they are seeing an incredible shift towards automated operations in the packhouse sector, as the industry is struggling to get the people to get fresh produce to market.

“Global Pac will be focusing on automation and data analytics platforms to help our clients worldwide,” says Pittsinger.

Kiwi driverless shuttle company Ohmio has signed a $20 million deal with the Chinese on a joint venture manufacturing deal.

The deal means Ohmio will set up production in China, with a factory based in the Chinese city of Heshanwould.

The deal comes off the back of a recent signing that sold 150 autonomous vehicles to Korea, and as a result looked for further investment into its manufacturing arm.

While Ohmio had early hopes of setting up production in Christchurch, it couldn’t attract enough local investment, and alternatively found increased support in China.

The company signed a memorandum with Christchurch airport in early 2017, which staged two trials and has the aim of using the vehicles to transport passengers from carparks to the terminal.