Lenora Nysse is the Willy Wonka of Raumati, a chocolate-maker who has turned her hobby into a $2 million-a-year business.
It's taken 20 years for her to emulate the character from a Roald Dahl book, but now the Kapiti Coast factory Nysse helped set up is pumping out 100 tonnes of
chocolate a year.
Sixty thousand people a year visit the Nyco Chocolates factory-shop on State Highway 1.
It makes Star Wars, Simpsons and Casper the Ghost chocolates, and courtesy chocolates for top hotels.
Last year the firm, now run by Nysse's son Steven, was contracted by a Singapore company to make 28 tonnes of coffee-filled chocolate bars.
After years in the business, mother and son are still partial to a bit of chocolate.
"I like it. I like the lifestyle, I like chocolate," said Steven.
His mother started the business in 1981 after receiving encouragement from friends keen on her home-made Dutch-style chocolates.
In a one-room former hair salon in Featherston, she began making chocolate alphabet letters.
Today the business employs 12 people, filling a niche in making chocolates for the tourism and hospitality markets.
In the early days, Steven took his mother's car all over the country selling the chocolate letters.
He progressed to a light truck, clocking up 100,000km a year, while the factory outgrew its old premises and moved into four different buildings in Featherston.
Being spread out was less than ideal, but the problem was solved when Steven Nysse spotted a former fruit and vegetable shop for sale at Raumati.
He invested everything he had in the place - going from having no debt to owing half a million dollars - and spent months renovating the place so the machinery could be moved over from Featherston, ready for opening in 1992.
He said Nyco had invested $1 million in specialised chocolate machinery, including a "one shot" moulder able to make 10,000 soft-centred chocolates a minute.
The chocolate is made from Belgian couverture or pure chocolate imported from Singapore.
It is melted in big converted dairy vats, then tempered and moulded, spun or made by hand into its final form.
- NZPA
