Turning the Tide with Supplier Diversity

Supplier diversity is about creating equity for minority and indigenous owned businesses and improves the social outcomes for communities that have been marginalised and made to feel invisible in the economy.

Amotai is the intermediary for supplier diversity in Aotearoa and supports over 1,200 Māori and Pasifika businesses into procurement opportunities. We are privileged to receive Māori Outcomes Funding to support Māori businesses in Tāmaki Makaurau.

In 2021, this funding enabled us to work across 109 procurement opportunities from large buying organisations worth over $230M in value. We put forward over 400 connections for Māori businesses (some were put forward more than once) to the opportunities. The opportunities ranged from catering, translators, concreting, electricals and fencing to project managing and building houses. However, regardless of the size or type, each opportunity is valuable as it has potential to lead to further business of higher scale and value.

More and more Māori businesses in Tāmaki Makaurau are being invited to tender for contracts from large buying organisations. Businesses needing support in tender writing are referred to other experienced Amotai businesses, creating an eco-system of support for businesses.

Working with Auckland Council, we’ve been able to support various divisions to engage more effectively with Māori suppliers for tender and panel opportunities, for example, we were able to identify Māori businesses for Auckland Council panels who may have never been considered in the past.

Being an SME is very difficult to out-bid a prime e.g. Fletchers, however working collectively together, Māori businesses are able to scale much quicker and with less capital investment needed if they were to try and do it on their own. We have also been able to support Māori businesses to expand beyond working in Tāmaki Makaurau and linking with other Māori businesses around the motu to tender collectively for large national projects.

During the most challenging times of COVID, Amotai pivoted to focus on connecting with businesses and ran online workshops and also supported the Activate Tāmaki Makaurau programme that was lead out by Tātaki Auckland Unlimited.

There is no cost for businesses to register with Amotai, however they must be at least 50% owned by someone who has affiliates to an Iwi and/or Pacific nation. We currently have 369 verified Māori and Māori/Pasifika owned businesses. These businesses employ over 4,700 employees of which at least 70% are Māori and/or Pasifika.

Supplier diversity is still in its emerging stages here in Aotearoa. We are decades behind other countries such as USA and Australia, however with the ongoing support of Auckland Council and Māori Outcomes Funding, supplier diversity is definitely making waves and we believe that the tides are slowing turning.