Press Releases & What's New

Shweeb World Record Broken

November 2012

The Women’s World Shweeb record was broken by Rachel Dunn onsite at Agroventures Adventure Park in Rotorua, NZ on Sunday 4 November 2012.  Rachel Dunn from England achieved the World Record with a 58.8 second race time and walked away with $1000
prize – the first time this prize has been awarded to a Shweeb Racer since the competition was launched in September 2011.

Not only did Rachel break the Women’s World Record, she also broke the Women’s record for the United Kingdom and her Age Group Record. The previous Women’s World Record
of 59.0 seconds had been held for over 2 years by an Australian racer, Lisa P. The current Men’s World Record is 54.8 seconds and is still held by New Zealander, Alex B.

Rachel is currently in New Zealand to compete in The Fast 5 Netball World Series where she is the Goal Shoot for the English Team.

The series is a high-speed, high-octane variant on the traditional game played by world's top six netballing nations - New Zealand (the Fast5Ferns) Australia, England, Jamaica, South Africa and Malawi.

visit our websites:  www.agroventures.co.nz     www.shweeb.co.nz

Agroventures is delighted to announce the appointment of its new Senior Management team

Head of Sales
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Mary Tolley as Head of Sales,primarily responsible for wholesale, Inbound and Backpacker markets.Mary has had a distinguished career to date and sports considerable experience in the tourism industry, her last position being in a senior sales role for four years with Tamaki Tours. Mary has incredible enthusiasm, major networks and is delighted to jump off tall structures(with a larger rubber band attached of course!) – making her an exceptional fit and asset for the company.

Sales and Marketing Coordinator
Amanda Meikle has been appointed to this full time role after spending the past two years supporting Anna and Melissa. Amanda brings incredible knowledge of the business (having previously worked in the park as an activity operator) and will efficiently support both Anna and Mary going forward.

Rotorua Sales Representative
James Hughes, as many of you already know will continue on his great work as our Rotorua Sales Representative working closely with the local hotel, motel and backpackers around town. 

Managing Director, Peter Cossey said “We are clearly very sad to see Melissa leave us but understand the new challenges she wishes to embrace. She has overseen a major restructuring and the building of a fabulous team and culture at the park. We are continuing her legacy by creating new positions to aggressively grow our business both locally and offshore.We are extremely fortunate to have such talent and experience internally that have now made more senior positions their own. In this respect congratulations to Jared, Anna and Amanda who we are confident will continue their wonderful contributions to the company and industry as awhole. Additionally it is with huge pride we announce the appointment of Mary Tolley from Tamaki Tours to our team as Head of Sales. Mary has exceptional ability and is well-known in the industry. We continue in great hands and look forward to exciting developments in the future.”

Agroventures is NZ’s premiere adventure park with five iconic NZ rides. It islocated adjacent to the Agrodome at Paradise Valley Road, off SH5,Ngongotaha.

Nitro Circus takes on Agroventures

February 2011


Yesterday Agroventures hosted the cast and crew from Nitro Circus Live. Closed to the public they had exclusive use of Rotorua Bungy, Swoop, Shweeb,

Agrojet and Freefall Xtreme Body flying. It was a mixture of business and pleasure as they blew off steam having fun on all rides while filming for their third series which will show on MTV in the near future.

Melissa Mills - Agroventures General Manager was the driving force behind getting them here to the park “We are extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to showcase Agroventures to the team especially due to their hectic touring schedule throughout NZ and we are definitely excited about the exposure and hype this will generate for Agroventures from the massive Nitro Circus fan base once this is aired worldwide” said Melissa.  

 In true Agroventures spirit, we decided to push the boundaries that couple of inches further and for the “first time ever Nitro Circus only special” we had Agrojet Ski biscuiting on our purpose built jet sprint course, Body Flying battles and Bungy Jumping  and Swooping in all sorts of creative styles. Travis Pastrana the star of Nitro Circus was a staff photo favourite had a fantastic time bodyflying on the Freefall Xtreme and pulled off a blistering 54.5 second race time on the Shweeb which sparked a fierce competition amongst the other athletes– Erik Roner  Extreme Skier and base jumper was the fastest with an amazing 53.8 seconds. 

Our staff were given the rare chance to rub shoulders with the extreme sport super stars and after all the excitement of the activities got to relax in the sun showing them a true kiwi style BBQ accompanied with true kiwi hospitality.  

Google comes calling to invest in a unique NZ business

In 2008 Google launched a project called 10^100 that called for ideas that would change the world by helping as many people as possible. Google evaluated 154,000 ideas submitted by the public and came up with 16 groupings of ideas for the public to vote on.

When ‘Drive innovation in public transportation’ turned out to be one of the five winning ideas, Google set about finding an organisation, company or individual to help bring that idea to life. Naturally enough it was a Google search that brought Shweeb to their attention, and ultimately led to Shweeb becoming one of a very select group to capture the imagination of the 10^100 advisory board and share in the $US10 million worth of
investment funding that Google committed to the project.

Peter Cossey, Managing Director of Shweeb and also Managing Director of Agroventures in Rotorua, where the Shweeb is based, says Shweeb has secured $1.36 million ($US1m) in funding from Google in return for a minority shareholding in the company. Any profits Google make from their investment will go to a charitable trust for the betterment of public transportation.

For the uninitiated Shweeb is best described as a pedal-powered pod attached to an overhead monorail.  It is an exciting, dynamic ride where riders experience up to 60 degree swings on the curves and soar high and low over the undulating terrain.  Riders lie back in a recumbent position for maximum comfort and minimum aerodynamic drag. The hard wheels on the track reduce rolling resistance, and as riders click through the seven gears they get up to high speed (over 40 kph) with little effort. Racing can be either against the clock or another rider. Two Shweeb pods can also be joined together for tandem racing.

Opened in Rotorua in October 2007, the Shweeb is a one-of-kind adventure ride that was initially dreamt up by Geoff Barnett, a keen cyclist with an interest in sustainable transport, whilst living in Tokyo a decade ago.  Mr. Barnett reasoned that overhead cycle monorails connecting the city’s skyscrapers above the streets of Tokyo had to be a better solution than negotiating traffic jams or building even more roads and expressways. Returning to his home in Melbourne, he worked on the concept and developed it into a design. Following six years in the refining and testing stages, Mr. Barnett felt that Rotorua, New Zealand, an adventure playground already well known for innovative tourism products, was the perfect place to let the public test ride the concept. So far more than 30,000 riders have given Shweeb a resounding thumbs up. The current world record is 55 seconds for the 600m race. 

Agroventures General Manager Melissa Mills says she is blown away by the offer from Google.

“From a branding prospective, it’s a great way for us to gain exposure for Shweeb on the national and international stage. Even people who had never heard of this adventure ride, or Agroventures, prior to the involvement with Google are likely to want to check out Shweeb to see what all the fuss it about and, hopefully come and have a ride next time they are in Rotorua. That way they’ll also discover it is one of our unique line-up of adventures including the Swoop, Agrojet, Freefall Xtreme and Rotorua Bungy.”    

As part of its due diligence, Google had the opportunity to visit Shweeb and check out demonstrations of the technology.   Mr. Cossey says in order to meet Google’s criteria ‘To drive innovation in public transport and develop new transportation technologies that will help move more people with less energy, greater efficiency and fewer causalities’, they propose to use the funding on research and development in order to build a showcase transit system in the Northern Hemisphere based on the prototype that Shweeb is already operating in Rotorua. An announcement on that can be expected shortly.

“The reason we have chosen to go offshore is really one of necessity,” says Mr. Cossey. “While the prototype has been thoroughly tested in New Zealand; in order to gain creditability in the global marketplace we need to test a transit system in a high density population destination. The Northern Hemisphere became the natural choice for us due to the sheer number of people that require transport and also the opportunity to achieve a higher global profile for the future growth of the company. It will also give us the ability to lock ourselves away for 12 months and concentrate on the massive opportunity that Google has laid at our door.”