The SME Stream

In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 57, our guest is The Right Honourable Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister of New Zealand.
A typical Kiwi upbringing was a hallmark of young Christopher Luxon’s life. The oldest of three brothers, he grew up in Christchurch and later Auckland, with working parents and a work ethic that was obvious early.
He was a sports mad kid, but it didn’t stop there. Walking home one afternoon he decided to cold call the neighbourhood homes to see if he could sell his services as a window cleaner. A business was born. It’s owner-operator just 14 years old.
He returned to his hometown of Christchurch for his university studies before his corporate career took hold.
Starting as a management trainee with global consumer goods giant Unilever, it was a company and a career that took him around the world. He worked in Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA before his eventual appointment as President and CEO of Unilever Canada.
In 2011, he returned to New Zealand for a senior executive role at Air New Zealand and a year later he was appointed CEO, a role he held for seven years.
That he walked away from such a spectacular business career is a story in itself. Within four years, and after just three years as a Member of Parliament, he became New Zealand’s 42nd Prime Minister.
In the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast, Christopher Luxon talks openly with Bruce Cotterill about his short but spectacular rise in New Zealand’s political scene. He is surprisingly open about his successes and failures in government to date and equally forthright about the assembly and operation of a coalition that has held together better than many expected.
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A half-tonne metal “donut” silently floating in a vacuum chamber in Wellington might sound like science fiction. But as you’ll hear in the latest episode of The Business of Tech, it’s very real – and it could reshape New Zealand’s role in the global race for nuclear fusion.
This week, I sit down with BusinessDesk journalist Greg Hurrell to unpack OpenStar’s dramatic new milestone: levitating a superconducting dipole in a near-perfect vacuum and firing superheated plasma around it.
It’s a key proof point for the Wellington startup’s radically different approach to fusion, one that flips the dominant tokamak design inside out. Instead of surrounding the plasma with giant magnets, OpenStar suspends a powerful magnet in the centre of the chamber and uses Earth-like magnetic fields to confine the plasma.
​Big ambitions, big interest
Greg and I were in the room at Open Star last week as Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones, Infrastructure minister Chris Bishop, investors, scientists and even a representative from the United Arab Emirates watched the demonstration.
For a company that has only raised a modest $10 million Series A round, hitting this milestone matters. it shows OpenStar can deliver on ambitious engineering promises, exactly what global venture capital wants to see. The government has granted OpenStar a $35 million loan via the Rural Infrastructure Fund to build a bigger prototype – Tahi.
Shane Jones, Chris Bishop, and Christopher Luxon listen to OpenStar CEO and co-founder Ratu Mataira explain the plasma firing experiment.
Inside-out design
We dig into why this “inside-out” design could be simpler to build and maintain than giant international projects, how New Zealand-grown intellectual property in high‑temperature superconductors and flux pumps gives OpenStar a potential edge, and what comes next with its larger Tahi and Maui machines aimed at real fusion and, eventually, commercial-scale power.
We also tackle the hard questions: tritium supply, neutron damage to reactor components, and whether a relatively small team in Wellington can compete with well-funded overseas rivals and decades of tokamak momentum.
If you are interested in energy, climate, deeptech or New Zealand’s science system, this episode goes deep on a genuine moonshot as it crosses from lab experiment into serious industrial ambition.
Streaming on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our sponsor 2degrees.
Show notes
OpenStar Plasma Showcase Event - Youtube
OpenStar completes critical step on nuclear fusion path - BusinessDesk
Openstar says $35m Government loan will help it stay in NZ - BusinessDesk
New Zealand fusion startup claims major advance in New Zealand trial - Bloomberg
Nuclear fusion seems hot right now — but how close is fusion power? - CBC
Chinese nuclear fusion reactor pushes plasma past crucial limit: what happens next - Nature
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David Bortolussi, CEO of The a2 Milk Company, tells us how the premium dairy pioneer has put the global pandemic in the rearview and is aiming for a $2 billion sales target. He shares the inside story of coming back from "rapid decline" to share price gains.
Find out why David isn’t worried about declining Chinese birth rates, and how the company is shifting its strategy towards e-commerce. David shares a2’s goal to reach profitability in the US by 2027, helped along by the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, and the challenges of getting traction in India. How did a2 use the My Little Pony brand to blow up on Chinese social network RedNote? How did it become the first-ever dairy partner of the Australian Open? And are plant-based milks actually a threat to dairy?
Plus, with a strong position in the global infant formula market, learn why David now believes "senior nutrition" for the over-60s is the next big opportunity.
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The PM ponders Trump’s tariffs and the potential of selling Pāmu. He also discusses the industry kickback against the RMA rural reforms and falling electricity prices. Plus, the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (the artist formerly known as Prince).
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A positive financial result has gentailer Meridian thinking about infrastructure upgrades.
It recorded a half year profit after tax of $227 million.
Chief executive Mike Roan says they're considering increasing capacity at the Pukaki dam in the Mackenzie basin.
He says it's still early days though.
"The question that I've asked the team is - is it economic to do it? Does it actually make financial sense to expand the amount of hydro storage that we've got?"
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