Canny businessman makes sweet success

By PAULA OLIVER

Roger Halliwell is living proof that it is never too late to start something tasty and new.

After turning 52 and wondering what to do with himself, Mr Halliwell went back to what he knew best - cooking good licorice and creating his own individually wrapped recipe for success.

His penchant for thinking outside the square of straps and twists has led to a new range of chocolate- and apricot-filled logs that sweet-toothed Americans can't get enough of.

And it all happened in six years.

Mr Halliwell's licorice love affair began in 1983, when he was asked to manage a company in liquidation.

He ended up buying the assets and shifting the business to a 20,000 sq ft factory in Levin, which he sold four years later to Arnotts.

Out of the industry but never mentally switched off, Mr Halliwell became upset when Nestlé, which had bought the factory from Arnotts, decided to close it in 1994.

"I guess I just felt sorry for the people losing jobs, and I knew Levin needed some good industry," he says.

"Besides, I was wondering what to do with myself, and had a son at a loose end in England."

Teaming up with his son Regan and a former Nestlé engineer, Mr Halliwell travelled to Minneapolis to buy machinery.

"I felt like I had unfinished business, and I felt sure that this time we wouldn't remain a small operation.

"We bought big so we had a lot of capacity for a world market, and it took about six months for us to recondition the equipment."

Instead of buying a single one-tonne cooker, the trio bought two, so they would not lose any valuable production time. Mr Halliwell is adamant that this is an area where Kiwi entrepreneurs often fall down.

"Big is best when it comes to machinery, but there are a lot of small manufacturers thinking purely and solely for the New Zealand market, which isn't that big.

"Spend a little more, even if does seem a gamble - business is always a gamble, but the higher the risk the higher the return."

When the machines were up and running, the RJ's Licorice team began to look for something that would make them stand out from the mass producers.

The idea of chocolate- and apricot-centred logs became reality because of the presence of an engineer able to make a machine that could it.

Mr Halliwell now has two fulltime engineers to maintain and develop the machines, eliminating waiting time when things go wrong.

"The confectionery industry has always made solid machines that last forever, so there hadn't been much research and development for better machines," Mr Halliwell says. "To be honest, our engineers probably have 10 years' work ahead of them developing and planning the future."

It was then decided to individually wrap the licorice logs for greater hygiene on the dairy counter - and the team settled in to watch the products fly.

"There have been few changes to licorice in 30 or 40 years, so I just wanted to bring a bit of Kiwi ingenuity to it, and change the bread and butter product," Mr Halliwell says.

"We got a Neilson report done after 3 1/2 years of operation and we had grown the licorice market by 20 per cent overall."

The local market was never going to be big enough to support the factory's 500-tonne-a-month capacity, and exports are now being sent to the US at the rate of five containers every two months.

Mr Halliwell says the exports were mainly a result of people coming to him after a person outside the business took his samples to a Chicago trade show.

"We didn't even know they had taken our products, but ... we got calls from the States and we haven't looked back. It's crucial that we had the capacity to ... meet them."

Australian exports also resulted from people approaching the firm, but Mr Halliwell has since taken more control of that market. He is sure Australian exports will become a valuable part of the business.

With his son managing the factory, Mr Halliwell is now free to work on designing packaging and planning marketing from a base in Wellington. But there is an advantage to having the factory in Levin - low overheads, including rates.

Mr Halliwell now employs 25 people and the bulk of his sales comes from supermarkets.

Confectionery is in his blood, he says, and he urges Kiwi businesses to look for niche markets and not try to compete too much on price.

"The small man has to be prepared to target a small area of the market, and not take it on at an uneconomic level. Getting in like that and then putting your price up is a foolish way to go bust."

KEYS TO SUCCESS


* Thinking big in factory capacity.

* Employing skilled engineers who develop specialised machinery.

* Creating innovative products.

* Using premises with low overheads.