Pacific Fibre link gets heavyweight investor boost

Trade Me founder and primary Pacific Fibre investor Sam Morgan. Photo / Getty Images

A planned high-speed fibre link between New Zealand, Australia and the US has been given a boost with the emergence of several high profile investors.

The line-up - "friends and family" of the original investment team - includes former Fairfax chief executive David Kirk, investment advisor Gareth Morgan, Seaworks chairman Bill Day and MYOB founder Craig Winkler.

They join founders Sam Morgan, Sir Stephen Tindall and Rod Drury.

Kirk will also be taking a position on the board.

The 13,000km 'Pacific Fibre' project aims to provide an international data link five times the capacity of the current Telecom-backed connection.

Co-founder and newly appointed chief executive, Mark Rushworth, said the funding enables the project to move to the next phase of securing investment.

"The money we've raised doesn't cover the complete build. What it does is gets us through to taking that customer engagement we've had through to binding contracts and engaging an investment bank," Rushworth said.

A management team that includes Rushworth, fellow investors Lance Wiggs, telecommunications specialist John Humphrey and Australian-based sales director Mark Kuper have been meeting with prospective customers.

Rushworth said the response has been positive with customers seeing it as a way of driving competition into the marketplace.

He said verbal commitments from customers are currently being converted into binding contracts, which will in turn be presented to an investment bank.

A capital raising is timetabled for this side of Christmas, Rushworth said.

Funding is likely to come from a combination of debt and equity with the exact mix yet to be determined, he said.

Rushworth said the build cost, originally estimated at $900 million, has come down.

He said it was likely to now be less than US$500 million as the initial enquiries with suppliers have now been converted to firmer quotes.

Rushworth said around 80 per cent of the demand is likely to come out of Australia.

He said Kirk's profile in Australia would help sign up customers there.