A meeting between 50 of the Country’s biggest companies took place yesterday in an effort to co-ordinate a large scale response to the quake.

Business New Zealand’s Major Companies Group is comprised of more than 50 Chief Executives from around the country, who met in Auckland and by teleconference, to pledge their support to the recovery effort.

Members of the Major Companies Group included Fonterra, Air New Zealand, ACC, Fletcher Building, NZ Post, Skycity, Telecom, Vodafone and Westpac, among others.

Business New Zealand CEO Phil O’Reilly says the main item on the agenda was the opportunity to contribute towards the relief effort.

"We discussed a wide range of issues some issues related to of course the people.

"There are issues around infrastructure - particularly water and sewage into plants and into factories and into distribution centres; and we talked about particularly issues around infrastructure sectors such as the food distribution sector, telecommunications, energy, water and so on.

"What are we doing to get those up and operation as quickly as possible or making sure they continue to operate."

Mr O’Reilly says the commitment was unanimous, all companies agreeing across the board to help however they can.

"We talked a lot about how we can co-ordinate where that fits best; we’ve set up a series of sub-committees of the company.

"They may cover things like horizontal infrastructure. Things like roads, sewage and water, buildings is another one, temporary housing.

"We’ve got the companies nominating into those committees and are using that as a common forum to talk to government and to local authorities in Christchurch to make sure that as we start into the recovery and rebuild phase, we will be going just as hard and as fast as possible."

The Major Companies Group will hold their first official meeting on Monday, aiming to come up with some concrete strategies for the recovery.