Amid the gloom one New Zealand company is prospering and taking on staff.
Christchurch-based Cookie Time is taking advantage of the low New Zealand dollar to export its One Square Meal bars to the United States.
The bar is scientifically designed so that every pack contains a third of the daily recommended nutrients.
In the past year, New Zealand sales of One Square Meal bars have shot up 30 percent. And it is not just fitness fanatics buying them, busy parents, office workers and mobile sales reps are all snapping them up.
Around 36 tonnes of the bars are now going to be exported to the US and sold in over a thousand stores.
The new deal means the company's production line is now working around the clock, creating 27 new jobs.
Cookie Time is hoping the bars will appeal to Americans, 34 percent of whom are classified as obese.
The company's US spokesperson, TV host Phil Keoghan, will cross the country in 42 days, powered by the meal replacement bars.
"I'm a firm believer in grass roots marketing and so I thought the best way to get this product out there would be to get on my bike and ride across America," Keoghan says. "So I'm going to be bike riding about 7,000 kilometres.
Cookie Time says if the expansion in the US is successful it will look at introducing them to the Australian market.
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