Water New Zealand Annual Conference and Expo postponed due to COVID alert levels

4 September 2020

Water New Zealand has postponed this year’s Annual Conference and Expo following the announcement by the Prime Minister that COVID-19 alert levels will remain as they are until at least mid-September.

The conference, which has attracted up to 1200 exhibitors, speakers and delegates was due to begin in Hamilton on 16 September, with a pre conference Taumata Arowai water regulatory workshop on 15 September.

The new dates are 17-19 November with the pre conference workshop now to be held on Monday 16 November.

“Our priority is to ensure that we have a safe and successful face to face experience and that means we will need to be at Alert Level 1,” says Water New Zealand Chief Executive Gillian Blythe.

“We’re optimistic that we can all have a great conference in November but if groups of more than 100 are still not possible, the conference will go fully online and we will work to have as good a virtual expo event as possible.”

“We’ll still have our great line up of keynote and guest speakers including Henk Ovink who is Special Envoy for International Water Affairs in the Netherlands and a member of the World Bank High Level Panel on Water.”

Other keynote speakers include Watercare Chief Executive Raveen Jaduram and the Chief Executive of Taumata Arowai Bill Bayfield.

“We understand that this postponement will cause inconvenience and we appreciate the continuing patience and support from delegates, speakers and especially our exhibitors.”