Tomoana Freezing Works – David Gusscott

Ewan McGregor: Good evening, everyone. Welcome, and another good turnout. I’m sure we won’t be disappointed. I’d like to introduce our guest speaker this evening, David Gusscott. He gave me a quick rundown on life’s history. He started his tertiary education at Massey … didn’t tell us what he’d done before then, but I’m sure it was a virtuous life. And he graduated from Massey; he went overseas; studied further for eleven years; graduated; got another degree. His speciality is actually in animal nutrition. He came back and worked in that field. In 1981 he became involved in the meat industry; managed the Weddel works at Gisborne before coming to Tomoana, and was the last manager of that mighty works. I welcome David Gusscott.

David: Thank you, Ewan, and thank you very much for the warm welcome. And let me say that tonight, because there’s very little written history, and a lot of it was lost when Tomoana finished … nor any chance to recover it. Yes, there is information around and we’ve gathered what we can, but a lot of it also comes from other people, and knowledge that I picked up in the time that I was with the organisation. If you don’t mind I’m putting my glasses on, and I’m going to be referring to my notes quite frequently. [Chuckle]

As you know, tonight we’re here to talk about the history of the meat industry in Hawke’s Bay, with particular emphasis on Tomoana, and it would be rather remiss of me if I didn’t make considerable reference to the founder of Tomoana, William Nelson.

William first came to New Zealand with his brother, Frederick, and they arrived in around about … I think it was 1863, and they fought actually for a couple of months in the Maori Wars in the Waikato. And following that they came down to Hawke’s Bay, and they took up some land out Kereru way. Times were pretty tough, and so what happened was that to diversify, William actually set up a small flax mill – and one of their first flax mills in New Zealand. But unfortunately that business folded, and so with his pockets nearly empty, William decided to return to the UK. And he went back to England in 1872, and he left his brother on the farm at Mangateretere. Having gone back to the UK, he joined his other two brother, George and Montague, in the family’s gelatine business, and it was while there William learned a great deal about different methods of meat preservation.

Now in that period from 1850 to 1880, the population in England grew from roughly twenty-eight million to nearly thirty-eight million. There was quite a rapid expansion in the English population, and as such meat was becoming more scarce, and obviously the price was going up. So there was a lot of emphasis being put into meat preservation.

William was also aware, in England, from his brother here, that during the 1870s New Zealand was going through a hard time and there was a sustained period of Depression. People were getting very little meat, and wool was worth very little. So for that sort of environment, William decided with what he was doing with meat preservation, that he should come back to New Zealand.

So he came back, and when he got here he found that the sheep numbers had outgrown the available pasture, and that flocks of sheep were known to be driven over cliffs to reduce their numbers. By now, there were over ten million sheep in New Zealand. So when he came back in 1880, William put in place his plan to establish a meat cannery and a tallow recovery plant, and he established this at Tomoana at the end of what’s now known as Tomoana Road. Essentially, this was a boiling down plant. Some meat and extract was canned; the tallow was refined; and the balance, which is most of the carcasses and offals – they were rendered and used as fertiliser.

Then, in 1882, the good ship ‘Dunedin’ sailed from Port Chalmers with four thousand nine hundred carcasses to the UK. They were frozen, and they were kept frozen in transit using compressed ammonia as the refrigerant. This shipment from New Zealand arrived in good condition, and at six pence a pound, the net price was double that was previously being achieved.

The success of the ‘Dunedin’ resulted in a demand for what became known as ‘freezing works’. William swiftly realised that there was an opportunity here, and he immediately enlisted some English capital from his brothers and went about transferring the boiling down plant to a freezing works.

In 1883 he established the company, Nelson Brothers Limited, and work began that resulted in the first frozen meat shipment leaving the Port of Napier in March 1884 on the ship ‘Turakina’. It comprised 9,000 frozen carcasses from Tomoana. Initially, the plant was designed to kill 400 sheep a day. In that first year, 1884, the records show the forty-one thousand sheep and ten bullocks were exported frozen. With the undoubted success of refrigeration, this had turned the tide in favour of William. In a very short period of time the freezing capacity at Tomoana was doubled, and by 1891, all of the original machinery had been scrapped.

With the success that he had at Tomoana, Nelson Brothers then built several other plants, and they had many other approaches from companies to buy out their plants or their businesses. William Nelson oversaw and built four other freezing works – Taruheru in Gisborne, and that opened in 1889; a plant at Waipukurau which opened in 1889, and that was to operate as a branch of Tomoana; there was a plant built in Woodville in 1891, and that also operated as a branch of Tomoana. And in Picton – just outside of Picton – a plant was built and opened in 1891 at Spring Creek, which is on the road between Picton and Blenheim, and the carcasses from there – they were taken and frozen and stored on the hulk in Picton Harbour.

What a lot of people don’t know is that in 1894 William purchased Ocean Beach at the Bluff, and that remained in the Nelson Brothers ownership until the year 1900. And in the period that they owned it, not only were they processing lambs, but they also developed a trade in frozen rabbits, and it became a major operation at the Bluff.

Now in the years 1892-1893, the industry became depressed again, and prices in the UK were falling. William was offered the Smithfield plant at Timaru, the Pukeuri plant at Oamaru, and the Burnside Plant – the first actual freezing works in New Zealand – at Burnside. He turned down each of these approaches, and in 1893, because of the economic conditions prevailing at the time, he closed his Waipukurau operations, which incidentally never opened again.

Meanwhile back at Tomoana, in 1897 there was a great flood, and the Works was under water and they were out of commission for some time. 1907 saw the first fire at Tomoana, and that was located in a freezer store. In 1913, because of the growth of the frozen trade, William made the decision to close the cannery that he had built at Tomoana.

By 1917, the daily kill capacity had increased to four thousand head a day, plus one hundred cattle. Now in 1915 the Westfield Freezing Company in Auckland was established, and that was set up by a company called W & R Fletcher New Zealand Limited, and that was the New Zealand arm of the London-based Vestey Group. In November 1920 the same Vestey Group completed negotiations with William Nelson to buy Nelson Brothers and the Tomoana Plant, and thereafter the site traded as Nelsons New Zealand Limited for the next sixty-five years. And throughout that it remained a wholly-owned subsidiary within the Vestey Group. And at that time just after the sale, William, who was seventy-eight at the time – he retired to his home, Waikoko, which at that time was surrounded by large gardens in the A&P Showgrounds.

Just before we leave William, we must recognise that he was involved with many other things in this district, which I guess makes him very much the father of Hawke’s Bay. Education – he was personally involved in the setting up of Hereworth and Woodford House schools. He was very involved in the reclamation of swampy land, particularly south of Napier in the Awatoto area. He was very influential in reducing the regional flooding, of which there was much at that time. The port, our roads, and many infrastructure items – they were driven or influenced by this pioneer of the district, and as one of the fathers of the New Zealand meat industry he will always be remembered. And as recently as last Saturday, the opening of the William Nelson Park here in Hastings.

Now as part of the Hawke’s Bay history of the meat industry, another British Company, Thomas Borthwick & Sons – they built a lamb slaughter plant at Pakipaki in 1905 and this operated until 1931 when it was severely damaged in the earthquake.

During those early years of the century, in around 1912, a number of farmers in Hawke’s Bay together formed the Hawke’s Bay Farmers Meat Company, and their buildings and plant opened for business in January 1915 in Whakatu.

In 1922 the Vesteys commenced a major rebuild at Tomoana. A new four-storey slaughter house block was built using reinforced concrete, and the new block was completed in 1924. And upon completion of that work a number of other things happened around the plant, for example, the Works Fire Brigade was formed. Railway sidings were put in right around the plant, not only to receive livestock, but also to consign product to the Napier port. The railway wagons were pushed around the plant … or pulled around the plant … by horses in those days, and the first steam locomotive came to the plant in 1931.

In Hawke’s Bay, we all know the date, the 3rd of February 1931 – the day of the earthquake. Fortunately there were no fatalities at the plant, but there was significant structural damage to the main block and the freezers, and if that rebuild of 1924 had not taken place, the whole building certainly would have suffered a far worse fate. Over the next few months a lot of work went into the restoration of Tomoana, and by the 1st of June 1931 the plant was again operating at its capacity. Immediately after the earthquake the Tomoana engine room was used to supply power to Napier, Hastings, and Whakatu, and became a contributor to power to all the area over the years up until 1933.

Slaughtering of lamb and sheep in those days was a solo butcher job. By today’s standards it was very rudimentary. In 1932 the company invested in new chains, but these were not the moving chains – they were a static rail, by which the solo butchers could hang their carcasses. But in doing so they were more efficient, and they were able to actually kill more per person per day. This was quite an innovation, but when throughput goes up and you work across a certain period of time, obviously if you get any inefficiency, the person who’s made the investment wants to get some return as well. There was a claim by the company to reduce wages, and as a result of that a prolonged strike took place – the first big one at Tomoana. But eventually the men returned, and the new system did achieve its objective.

In servicing the likes of the meat industry, there were many other companies around the town providing all sorts of goods and services, and one of them was a business owned by a man called Dougal Mackenzie in Caroline Road, who had a cooperage. Coopers as you know, make drums and casks and the like. Nelson’s purchased that business in 1933, and they transferred the manufacture of the products to the Tomoana site, and henceforth the plant produced its own tallow casks, pelt tasks, [casks] and casings barrels. In 1939 box-making commenced, and the boxes – they were used for the packing of meat products, and so the cooperage output expanded further. But by 1958, due to the shortage of white pine timber, the manufacture of tallow casks ceased and this product thereafter was put into forty-four gallon drums, or as we now know them, two hundred litres. The manufacture of boxes continued longer until 1962, and the only reason that that ceased was the ability of cardboard manufacturers to make heavy duty carboard cartons, which obviously were cheaper and less labour intensive in their manufacture.

In the early days William Nelson had his office in Hastings, and the plant was managed by a plant manager. And the original plant manager was a man called Warren, and he worked for William Nelson for over forty years. Then in 1935 the decision was taken, and the registered office of Nelson Brothers New Zealand Limited, the Vestey-owned company, was relocated to the plant at Tomoana Road.

During the late thirties there were further expansions to some of the production capacity. And then as I was preparing this tonight, I thought ‘Goodness me – this could go on forever.’ So at this point I think it’s probably better that I just go off into one or two subjects, and if there are any questions later that I can help with … well, I’ll do my best, but we certainly do not have all the answers.

So now let’s first talk about fires. It’s an industry hazard, and Tomoana has had its share. A 1941 fire destroyed a cold store. On March the 2nd 1960 there was a fire on the slaughter floor amenity block. But the major fire in the company’s history occurred just after noon on the 17th of September 1979, and many of you in this room may well remember that. It started in a freezer tunnel – that tunnel was built in 1890, back when William expanded his freezing capacity six-fold. The fire gutted the mutton slaughter house, the beef slaughter house, and the pig slaughter house. It also gutted the beef boning room, the beef chillers, all of the carton rooms, amenities and offices associated with those departments. It even burnt the meat inspectors.

The time of the fire and the fact it was a fine day, were very fortuitous. Had the fire started minutes earlier, hundreds of workers could have been trapped in the inferno. It happened during the lunch break. There have been many estimates put on the cost of that fire, but it’s been said that it was the largest insurance claim in New Zealand up until that time, and the estimate put the cost at up to thirty million [dollars] in value. Fortunately for the company a new mutton slaughter floor complex had already been commissioned several months earlier; however beef processing and other further processing of carcasses was not possible. The company could not process beef again until a new beef house and boning room were completed in late 1980, and during that time the company was very fortunate that other members of the meat industry, in Hawke’s Bay in particular, assisted to kill W & R Fletcher’s beef, including both the Pacific plant and Whakatu. But trying to run a business, provide a service, keep customers happy, remove debris, rebuild facilities, was not an easy task while you’re still trying to run your business.

We had another disaster. Just before Christmas … four days before Christmas in 1986 there was a major ammonia leak in the cold stores dedicated to carton products. This was a very dangerous situation, but again, fortunately, there were no serious injuries. Fortunately we managed to get the plant back into business straight after New Year, but there was a considerable tonnage of distressed product that was downgraded as a result, and I think the public of New Zealand enjoyed it, but many other meat wholesalers at the time felt that the product was probably going a little bit cheap. But it was distressed product, and we couldn’t export it.

Over the years, processing capacities were under constant review. The reason for this was both to meet the needs of suppliers … farmers … and also market demands. [Train whistle in background] And the capacities were increased. In 1950 the daily beef kill capacity increased from two hundred and fifty to five hundred head a day. In 1955 an eighty foot extension was built to the main slaughter floor to increase the mutton chain length, and that allowed the kill capacity to go up by forty percent from ten thousand to fourteen thousand head of lambs a day. In 1967 a further sixty-four foot extension was added to the six-chain capacity of the mutton slaughter floor, and that allowed the company to grow its daily kill to nineteen thousand two hundred lambs a day. Further significant investment was made in 1969 – a new on-rail beef slaughter and boning system was completed, and the beef capacity was now lifted to six hundred and seventy-five head a day.

May 23rd 1979 heralded the official opening by the Governor-General of the day, Sir Keith Holyoake, of the new mutton complex at Tomoana. A new six-chain operation within its own stand-alone building, complete with follow-on departments and amenities. It was built over three years at a cost of $36 million in those days. This complex introduced technologies never used previously in the industry – individual carcass identification; automatic weight recording; and carcass destiny routes for different processes – all done basically automatically. Between the kill floor and the freezer, there were only two employees. It meant the likes of cooling floors were gone – taken out of the industry at that plant. These innovations were years ahead of their time, but with it came some considerable challenges. Efficiencies were gained, and the plant now had a daily kill capacity of twenty thousand eight hundred and eighty head – that is forty-eight carcasses of lamb every minute. Following the 1979 fire, and when the new beef house was commissioned, the daily beef kill was also lifted, and this was now at seven hundred and forty head per day.

The last major investment made on the slaughter chains was in 1990. Two of the six lamb slaughter chains were removed, and they were replaced by two inverted chains – a new dressing system. This significantly reduced the number of butchers on these chains by increasing the daily throughput per chain from three thousand four hundred and eighty to four thousand two hundred per chain.

In the late 1980s Tomoana was the single largest workforce site in any industry in the country. At the peak of the season, it employed twenty-one hundred people on the site. Now let me let tell you – it was full of characters, and of course, a lot of everyday Kiwis. There were struck-off doctors; struck-off lawyers; defrocked priests; [chuckle] gang members and obviously, a great cross section of society. But in the workplace there were no barriers. They all had a job to do, and what happened beyond the gates of Tomoana was left at the gate. A lot of young people started straight after school. They had other careers in mind; they never left. The vast majority of the workforce were union members – clerical, trades, and meat processor unions, though while the company did not always see eye to eye with the unions demands or claims, overall I have to say the relationship was a very good one. On occasions there’d be a spat – some for a bit longer that others, but we could always discuss things clearly.

The union at times demonstrated good leadership of their members, particular when some major challenges had to be confronted, and I don’t think that has really been acknowledged too much out there in the world, as to the degree to which unions have also been of assistance to the companies at various times. They did this by agreeing with the company, and then convincing their members accordingly. In other words, not doing what their members always wanted … they saw what was right. We were partners more than we were opposites.

Seasonal conditions, droughts, market requirements, exchange rates, and a whole host of other factors made up the complex picture of day to day, week to week operations. The logistics of supply of livestock – you can imagine for forty-eight lambs a minute, the manning to process it. The process levels to be achieved, let alone storage and shipping. They all added to the complexity of the picture.

Now after Britain joined the EU [European Union] in the late 1970s, there was concern about our lamb markets there, and lamb numbers in New Zealand were increasing. And many of you will remember why – there was [were] government policies in place to expand numbers. In 1979 Halal slaughter came to New Zealand, and at that point we had to start to meet the needs of the new Muslim markets. In 1982 new EU requirements were placed on the industry. While a lot of their demands did not make a lot of sense, millions of dollars had to be spent to meet these requirements because they were more demanding than what the previous market requirements had been. I’ll give an example … in a cold store, you could not have a wooden wall, even if the product was in a carton. The EU were so anti-wood that actually you had to take the wooden handles out of brooms and replace them with metal handles.

Now from 1934 until 1960, no new meat plants were built in New Zealand. The processing industry was licensed. And in the 1970s there was a big push for delicensing, and this ultimately happened. And in the early eighties this was demonstrated by Hawke’s Bay Farmers building Takapau, and Graeme Lowe’s opening of the plant at Oringi. Several North Island plants like the Gear Meat Company in Wellington and the Patea Freezing Company – they closed in the very early eighties. Rationalisation was beginning. Government policy of the day created an increasing number of livestock. The EU then put a cap on imports, but Think Big was happening in New Zealand and the meat industry began to struggle with low margins and outdated labour costs as well as the need to meet EU requirements. The economy was rolling, and some farmers at that point saw opportunities for the sale of shares in their companies as a means to free up cash, and maybe put it into the likes of the Brierleys, and the Equity Corps, and others of the day.

Meanwhile Waitaki had been formed by a takeover and some amalgamations. Wattie’s, Fletcher Challenge, a number of other large organised companies, entered the industry along with several other parties. In 1983 a successful in-house rationalisation had taken place at the Gisborne Refrigerating Company’s plant in Kaiti. Wattie’s were by now a shareholder in that company, and then they and other parties who had been buying a lot of shares in other companies – and one of them was Hawke’s Bay Farmers Meat Company – these interests got together, and they pushed for a study on the efficiency and costs of most of the North Island plants. Now not all the companies got involved in this exercise, but most were. They used an overseas consultancy organisation called Pappas Carter. The farmers had their money; some of these companies were now no longer farmer controlled. The Gisborne data was used as the initial yardstick, and then social and community considerations were taken into account. And as a result all of these parties came to a number of conclusions that started to have repercussions around New Zealand, in particular the North Island.

On the 10th of October 1986 the outcome was known. Whakatu was to close, along with several other plants like Longburn, and shortly after others like Waingawa – they also followed.

For Hawke’s Bay, the closure of Whakatu was a major blow, and the implications of that decision started to ripple down through the community. I don’t know what’s been said to you about ‘why Whakatu’? But I’ll tell you what I know. It was more costly to operate; its killing lines were outdated; it had good freezers and it had some good follow-on departments like the new fellmongery. But the cost to get it and to keep it competitive where most of the work was being done, was going to be too great.

Now, one of the beneficiaries of this rationalisation was a company called Richmond’s. Now W Richmond & Co [Company] had been in the livestock procurement and export business since around about 1930. The founder, William Richmond – he had been a protégé of William Nelson. WR, as he was known – he’d supplied Tomoana with livestock for many years, and he continued to do so after the Vesteys bought that business. He was also a supplier to the Hawke’s Bay Farmers Meat Company, and they in turn had some investment in his business. In the 1970s when former All Black, John Buxton, headed Richmond’s, Richmond finally got its slaughter and processing through their partnership in Pacific with Graeme Lowe, and Richmond’s were then no longer just a farmer supply and export company.

When Whakatu closed in 1986, Richmond’s, now headed by the late John Foster, contributed to the Whakatu redundancy payout, and consequently became processors on their own behalf by taking over the Takapau plant.

In late 1985 W & R Fletcher New Zealand Limited and Crown Corporation formed Weddel-Crown Corporation Limited. Nelsons New Zealand Limited, that is Tomoana, became a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. Following the closure of Whakatu, Nelsons New Zealand Limited assumed ownership of all of the Whakatu assets – the land, the buildings, and the plant. The cold stores were used for Weddel product and some outside product, and processing agreements with the now enlarged Richmond business saw skins and casings from Takapau continue to be processed at Whakatu. Over the next couple of years, other operations were set up, and at the old Whakatu plant a new high-packing plant was started; a lamb added-value room; and a number of the buildings were leased out for non-competing parties.

Following the share market bust in 1987, Crown Corporation was in financial difficulty. The Vesteys stepped in and converted the joint venture back to a full Vestey ownership. In financing this transfer, the Vesteys provided a personal guarantee to the banks involved in financing the takeover.

Over the years, several other non-core freezing works activities also became part of the Tomoana business. In the late 1940s, a wool scour [?room?] was packed up, and the instructions were to ship it to the Argentine. Political problems – I think Peron-related – saw this consignment diverted to New Zealand and it was ultimately unloaded in Napier. After a lot of problems with the Spanish assembly instructions, the Tomoana engineers got the plant operating in 1950. In 1965 that scour capacity was increased further, and in 1982 a very large new scour train was also installed. Following the closure of Tomoana, I can tell you that that wool scour is now still operating, scouring wool in the Czech Republic.

In May 1989 Weddel purchased the tannery in Coventry Road that had belonged to the New Zealand Light Leather Company. Following a fire later that year, new plant was installed and it became the Weddel Group Hide Processing Plant. That plant is now the Lowe Tannery, and it’s at that site where the Lowe offices now are.

Now after the Vesteys stepped in and took over from Crown and went back to full ownership, the name of the company was changed to Weddel New Zealand Limited. Group operations were divisionalised and Tomoana became known – and it traded from that point onwards – as Weddel Tomoana Limited. The late 1980s and early ‘90s saw the meat industry under further pressure – falling numbers, low margins, and a rocked economy following the 1987 share market fallout. Industry participants were struggling. Some plants closed and the banks were screaming for their money. Several companies – not Weddel – even had bank representatives sitting in on their Board meetings. At Tomoana, our response to this environment was to mothball two lamb chains … two of the old ones; rationalise staffing numbers; and to initiate a new industrial agreement with the removal of all bonuses and incentives. In fact at that time, for the large workforce we were down to five wage rates for the whole place. We didn’t need a computer anymore to work out the wages. This was accepted by the parties and the plant performed well, and in 1994, the year the plant closed, the share of the kill for the Tomoana plant alone was just under twenty percent of the North Island lamb kill. The plant was making an operating profit and plans were well advanced for significant plant modifications to further increase efficiency and the bottom line.

In March 1994 Fortex went into receivership. Then, at three pm on Friday the 19th of August 1994, Weddel New Zealand called in the receivers. Vesteys and the overseas bankers – who already owned the New Zealand banks – had made the decision not to be able to come to agree to refinance the Weddel New Zealand business. On the 25th of August, a week later, the receivers advised that the Weddel plants were closed permanently. An industry consortium called Trial Run Holdings was formed to sell down the assets, and in the case of Tomoana, the land and buildings in Tomoana Road were sold to Heinz Wattie. The terms of that sale and the plant disposal were completed in March 1996.

What caused this to happen? The banks had too much money at risk in the industry at that time. One large cooperative at that time had been technically insolvent for several years. The banks would never have got their money from them. The closure and sale of all the Weddel New Zealand assets and the Vestey guarantee, would recover a large sum for the banks, plus remove a major industry competitor. A consortium of banks pulled the plug, and a large plant, profitable and a cornerstone of the Hawke’s Bay community, was forced to close. It was a bombshell. The plant had sixteen hundred people on the books at the time. They were difficult times, made even worse by the fact that under the terms of the receivership, redundancy was not an entitlement.

To complete this verbal picture of Tomoana – Tomoana was a workplace for a hundred and fourteen years. It was a place about people. Over those years, tens of thousands of Hawke’s Bay people passed through the gates. Certainly, we had our little tinkers, but mainly we had a highly motivated, hard-working team. The skills people obtained, the team work they displayed, the culture of the workplace and other attributes, gained at the Tomoana University for Life, thankfully saw all of the staff and the vast majority of the workforce find work shortly after the receivership. It still gives me personally a great sense of pride when employers both in and outside of the meat industry comment favourably on the quality of the people from Tomoana.

It’s been my pleasure to address you tonight to tell you about the Tomoana plant and its people, because they were major contributors to the growth and the development of the Hawke’s Bay that we all enjoy today. Thank you. [Applause]

Took a long time, didn’t it?

Question: I’m Gordon Vogtherr. We were Hastings Bacon Company – we’re now Holly Bacon Company. So far, you haven’t mentioned the managers. I remember back to Alex Kirkpatrick …

David: Yes – Wally Knight – I think Wally Knight followed him. Over the history of the hundred and fourteen years of Tomoana, there were seven General Managers, and there were eleven Operational Managers. And I can tell you right now that Wally Knight was the man who followed Alex Kirkpatrick. And Wally Knight, after that, went to Wellington and became the Group Livestock Manager, and he’s also famous for being father of the All Black, Michael Knight.

Alex Kirkpatrick was one of the … in 1924 … one of that great team. But Alex Kirkpatrick was the second-longest-serving of all the General Managers at Tomoana, and he was there until 1964.

Gordon: Now, you mentioned that Tomoana was killing twenty thousand sheep a day. Whakatu was doing the same thing, wasn’t it?

David: No. Their maximum tally was nineteen thousand two hundred. The maximum at Tomoana was twenty thousand eight hundred and eighty.

Question: Was it working at capacity? Or during the height of the season …

David: The New Zealand Meat Industry still remains a seasonal industry. Many Works in parts of the country shut down for a period. They used to – and even some still do – but the advent of chilled meat as opposed to frozen has meant that a fresher product is now able to be put into the market place, and that has had some smoothing effect in terms of supply. And that is done by different offers to farmers at different times of the year. So, the thing is that, once upon a time there was a high seasonal peak – in a drought year, that could run for four months. In other years, your peak might be there for six weeks; you could go away for a month and be back then for another month. So the curve of the kill actually follows grass growth. It’s as simple as that.

Question: [Inaudible] … when subsidies were removed from farmers around the mid-eighties?

David: 1980s. Yes, well quite a lot of things happened around about that time and one of them was … I think it was 1984 – Christmas ’84 – the meat export companies got told that the Meat Board was going to take over the marketing of all New Zealand lamb. Now at that point we had thirty-six to thirty-eight million lambs, and it was still increasing. Supplementary minimum prices were being paid; there was even guaranteed prices, irrespective of what the world market was. That was actually a great couple of years for the meat industry. The truth of the matter is that we killed whatever we could, and for a killing and freezing charge, the Meat Board agreed to pay us all storage. The longer it sat there, the better it was. And the Meat Board found that they didn’t have the contacts, and they couldn’t sell the product. And that’s when the likes of Bernard Matthews were brought into New Zealand, because they could sell legs, but they couldn’t sell forequarters to make the lamb roast. And ultimately, within two years – I think it was Christmas Eve 1986 – the Government announced overnight, just as the industry was shutting for Christmas, that as from the 1st of January, “the Meat Board is no longer the marketing agent for New Zealand lamb. Here, companies – you can have it back.” They’d lost a couple of million dollars. Now that was as a result of supplementary minimums driving up those numbers, and what happened was that when all this fallout then started to happen and it went back into the ownership of the companies, they had to try and pick the market up. It was very difficult – they were difficult times. And this is just before the 1987 worldwide share market crash. Margins went down; numbers fell; but the interesting thing is that at the maximum, New Zealand killed thirty-six and a half million lambs, I think it was, in the ’85-’86 season – average weight twelve and a half kilos. This year they’ll kill twenty-two million – average weight eighteen kilos. Actually, the amount of meat we’re exporting hasn’t fallen off at all. So we’ve just got to be careful that while we see falling numbers that they don’t tumble right out. But lambing percentages have gone up. Back then, they were eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five in a good year. Now, with the breeds that are being used, the methods, the timing of lambing, and all the other things, we’re now seeing a hundred and thirty … hundred and forty percent lambing. So you need less ewes, and we’ve got heavier lambs. We’ve actually got roughly the – in round figures, the same amount of lamb meat being exported now as what there was twenty years ago.

Question: Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, there was quite a flood of meat company [inaudible] and we were able to read about the history of many of the meat companies of the time. As far as I’m aware, I don’t think there was any such publications about either Tomoana or Whakatu.

David: A number of companies over the years commissioned the recording of their history, but not all of the companies. There are not many companies in New Zealand … in fact, I’m trying to think … I don’t think anybody in the New Zealand meat industry has been there for a hundred years. Tomoana as a plant was, but certainly not a company. So, the centenary thing hasn’t happened, but there have been a number of books written.

Question: David, to what extent, if any, did the disastrous fire of 1979 have on the final demise forty years later of Tomoana in the way of, say , increased debt and all that sort of … did it have any effect?

David: No. It didn’t, for the reason that there was a significant insurance payout. It was well insured.

Just before I go, thank you very much for inviting me, Ewan. It’s been very nice to see you all and it’s been a delight to tell you what I know of the story of Tomoana. Thank you.

Ewan: So thank you, David, and I’m actually writing a history of the Hawke’s Bay meat industry, and I want your notes. [Laughter]

David: They’re copyright. [Laughter; applause]