There have also been multiple tragedies suffered by the family, who were brought up to be emotionally and physically tough.
At its peak, Baker Timber Supplies manufactured more than one million kiwifruit packing trays a year, supplied thousands of poles for kiwifruit orchards across the Bay of Plenty and employed 20 staff.
Growing up, her parents' lives were consumed by work at the timber mill and their dairy farm, and had little time for the children, says Val.
Flo and Doug would get up early to milk the cows and then be away for work all day, and from age 13 Val would prepare the evening meal before her parents' return.
One of five, Val has been in the business for 35 year, working her way up from "office girl' to taking over as a manager after her dad died. She says all of her siblings have been involved in some way, many because of family loyalty.
At age 15 her brother Lloyd was pulled out of school for two months to run the box factory because Doug was sick and had eight staff working under him.
Working with family was often difficult and as relatives of Ned Kelly on one side and Hone Heke on the other, it's one with "a history of fighting", says Val.
Flo adds, "I don't know that there is anything good about working with family - it's all right when things go sweet".
As well as being hard workers, they are a family who learnt strength from a young age.
As a boy Doug dropped an axe on his foot, splitting his big toe in half.
Rather than make the hour-plus trip to the doctor, his father instead bound it with a sheet, poured kerosene on it and and said to leave it it for seven days, says Flo.
"We were brought up in an era that you were brought up tough."
At the mill and away from it, there have been a series of tragedies for the family.
On March 3 1942, Val's 19-year-old uncle Phillip was clearing scrub with a bulldozer and not realising there was a bank in front of him drove over it. Falling onto his head as the machine tipped over, he was killed instantly.
Her father Doug was also suffered a near-fatal accident while at work.
He was felling a tree at age 18 when it landed across his torso, breaking his pelvis in five places, perforating his spleen and breaking his arm.
"They didn't expect for him to live - never to walk, never to have kids," says Flo.
Yet, against all expectations Doug survived, and with few physical traces of the near-fatal accident.
Sixty years later he had to have his leg amputated below the knee after an infection set in during a routine hospital procedure to have his veins stripped.
"It was either amputation or cremation", says Flo.
Doug's father Wally was also affected by tragedy in 1951, when he was returning home from delivering a load of timber with his daughter Jennifer, aged 4, in the passenger seat beside him when her door fell open.
She fell into the path of an oncoming car and was run over and killed.
"It was the generation, we just carried on," says Val.
Duncan Dysart, from real estate agent Bayleys says existing resource consents for timber treatment will transfer with the sale of the land, and any purchaser can have access to previous suppliers and customers if their intention is to continue milling activities.
Alternatively, the property could be redeveloped into an industrial park for new business operations such as storage, transport, manufacturing, engineering, horticulture or rural sector activities, he said.
