Covid 19 coronavirus: entrepreneur Nick Mowbray says China needs to take more responsibility for virus

Zuru Toys chief executive Nick Mowbray. Photo / Supplied

Kiwi entrepreneur Nick Mowbray says China needs to take more responsibility for the Covid-19 coronavirus and put regulations in place to stop the potential spread of future viruses.

Mowbray, co-founder of toy make Zuru Toys, told Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB, the fact that China had not brought in new laws around wet markets or banned them was concerning.

"China needs to take more responsibility. The fact they haven't put in regulations or shut down wet markets immediately is concerning, I think that should be a concern for the whole world."

A wet market is similar to a farmers' market but also sells fresh meat and is thought to be where Covid-19 originated from in the city of Wuhan.

Mowbray, whose toy business has operated in China for around 16 years, said many viruses appeared to stem from Asia.

"It is clear there needs to be processes in place to not allow this to happen again."

Mowbray was also a vocal critic of the New Zealand government ahead of the move into lockdown.

But this morning he said comparing the government here with others around the world they appeared to have done a good job.

"Whether we could have done more earlier, I still think we could of. Whether that was a difficult decision to make earlier, quite possibly. It is easy to look at these things in hindsight."

Mowbray has been working with other business leaders to bring personal protective equipment into New Zealand.

Healthcare workers in hospitals and in the community, including at aged care facilities, have been outspoken about problems accessing PPE, even though the Government has been adamant that there is more than enough supply of masks, goggles, gowns and face shields.

On Tuesday the Auditor-General announced the Health Ministry had agreed to a review of its management of PPE for the Covid-19 response

Mowbray told Hosking there clearly seemed to be distribution issues with PPE.

"I'm not sure if that is something to do with there being multiple DHBs or DHBs not being centralised.

"It does seem there is a poor system in terms of understanding how much PPE there is and where that PPE is."

Mowbray said work needed to be done to streamline and centralise it.

"Like anything in business anything not streamlined becomes disjointed and hard to manage. I think that is what we are seeing here."

In terms of his own business Mowbray said China was now completely open, although restaurants and hospitality businesses still had low customer numbers, but Zuru was fully back up and running there.

"Our business has been impacted slightly on the mask side not so much on consumer side."

Hoarding of non-woven materials in China had pushed up the price which was flowing into its mask business and nappy production although the Chinese government had put a cap on the price this week.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website

Mowbray said it was still seeing demand for toys although it varied across the globe depending on the closure of speciality toy retailers.

"Toy specialist retail chains - a lot of those are shut down, but in the chains that are dual food and toys, multi-retailers like Walmart and Costco, Tesco- demand is up because kids are at home. Overall our business is down slightly but the demand from those established retailers is up."

He said arts, crafts and puzzles were in highest demand and were making up the lion's share of the toy market.

Its supply chain for the toy business remained normal but there were challenges in exporting masks and hand sanitiser where regulations were changing daily or weekly.

There were regulations around hand sanitiser because it was a health product and some countries were trying to ease that to get more in while China was still restricting how much could be exported.

"We are trying to export a lot of things like masks and sanitiser and the [Chinese] government is still very protective over allowing that to be exported in case there is a second wave so I think that indicates there is that concern."