About 1000 mourners wanting to pay their last respects to Dunedin businessman Howard Paterson took part in his funeral yesterday.
Mourners came from all parts of Paterson's life; family, friends and business colleagues. Also attending was National leader Bill English.
The Rev Martin Baker, of Dunedin's First Church, summed up the mood
of the day when he said there was a sense of unreality about arriving to remember the life of Paterson, 50, who died suddenly last week in Fiji.
Brothers Greg and Grant Paterson and close friends Peter Gowing and Chet Hatherley paid their personal tributes on behalf of the family, remembering the good times many had spent in the company of the South Island's leading entrepreneur.
Paterson's personal company, Otago Trust, hired a taxi company to carry people out to his home at Waikouaiti, 42km northeast of Dunedin, for the wake.
Paterson led a full and active life, starting his business career while still at high school by selling firewood.
From those beginnings, he rose to become the South Island's wealthiest man with an estimated $120 million.
His successes included Tasman Agriculture, which became the world's largest corporate dairy farmer; Mainland Poultry, which produces 40 per cent of New Zealand's eggs at Waikouaiti; New Zealand Deer Farms, the world's largest deer-farming group; A2 Corporation, which holds patent rights to a new generation of milk products; and Botry-Zen, Pharma Zen and Blis Technologies, which commercialise biotechnology developments.
Paterson is survived by his wife, Lee, and sons Matt, Rupert and Harry.
- NZPA
