Christmas Appeal: Tonnes of Bakels margarine make Tauranga Foodbank and mouths happy

Tauranga Community Foodbank warehouse manager Brendon Collins had a 'big thank you' for Bakels customer services manager Shelley Royal and managing director Antony Moess. Photo / George Novak

A Bay company is helping spread the love by donating tonnes of margarine to the Tauranga Community Foodbank.

For eight years Bakels Edible Oils, in Mount Maunganui, has supported the foodbank, each year building a stronger bond.

This year the company, which supplies many fast food brands and catering companies around New Zealand with oil and margarine, has donated 300 tubs, or 150kg, of margarine in time for Christmas.

That's on top of nearly 6500 tubs, or 3.2 tonnes of margarine, donated throughout the year.

The Bay of Plenty Times' annual, six-week Christmas Appeal, in partnership with Gilmours Wholesale Food and Beverage Tauriko, launched on November 7.

Foodbank warehouse manager and buyer Brendon Collins met Bakels customer services manager Shelley Royal on Wednesday to personally thank the voice he had heard at the end of the phone for four years.

"It's a big thank you from us. With the support you give us as a company, with the edible oil products, it means families and people are getting much more from their parcel and there's a lot more variety that they can use the products with."

In the past, Bakels had helped the Tauranga Community Foodbank by donating half of whatever the foodbank purchased. But, at the beginning of this year, they gave it for free.

Collins said the donation made a huge difference to the foodbank's clients' lives.

"The margarine product can be used for toast and sandwiches but we have baking bags as an option.

"The oil can obviously be used for cooking whether that be frying meat or anything they want."

Overall, the Christmas Appeal food donations usually get the foodbank through until April and the cash donations help it out until about May. Collins said the donation from Bakels would last until Christmas, depending on demand.

Bakels managing director Antony Moess said donating to the foodbank was a pleasure.

"We're a food business in a local community and we just think it's the right thing to do. That's part of being a business."

Moess believed businesses had a role to play in ensuring the community they lived in thrived.

"I think when we do business well, then businesses contribute or play a role in [communities] as well."

Earlier this week, the Bay of Plenty Times reported just under $40,000 of cash and food donations so far have been made to the Tauranga Community Foodbank.

The donations were a promising start to the $120,000 the foodbank had budgeted for food alone heading into next year.