Waipapa Pine wins top award

Waipapa Pine head Shane Horan (right) gets his company's awards from Maori Development Minister Te Ururoa Flavell. Photo / C Horsford Photography

Accentuating the positive is likely to have been one of the factors that won Waipapa Pine Ltd the Best Mori Business of the Year 2016.

Waipapa Pine also won the Most Outstanding Mori Enterprise category. Company director Shane Horan said he was "harassed" into entering the awards, the first time he has put his company forward.

"I felt that I just wanted to get on with business, but I was told I had to tell our story."

He said he bought a company that had gone into receivership and re-employed most of the company's former staff.

"We have gone from a company that had $3000 a month turnover to now $20 million and by the end of the year we want to increase our capacity by 50 per cent," he said.

Waipapa Pine has 80 staff in two plants, Waipapa and Whangarei, with about 80 per cent of employees of Maori descent. And that is one of the drivers for Mr Horan. "We want to create opportunities for our people in Northland. The region processes 41 per cent of the country's logs, Auckland needs 50,000. We should be grabbing this opportunity."

He is passionate about doing more with logs than exporting them to countries like China.

"If we as a country export our logs then we are also exporting our jobs."

Mr Horan said that might make sense for the Chinese to provide their people with jobs converting raw logs into value added products but made no sense for Kiwi foresters.

"A lot of guys don't know what their forests are worth."

He said that includes the social cost of unemployment stemming from "exporting jobs".

"In a few years the amount of logs available could be cut by half. What happens when those jobs go," he asked.

He said he and others in the industry were lobbying central government to make changes that would see more value added work carried out in Northland.

Mr Horan said there were 2630 jobs in Northland directly involved in the timber industry and another 7500 in service and related support industries.

Other award recipients on Friday night included:

- CrossFit Whangarei - Best Emerging Newly Created Enterprise

- He Puna Marama Trust's Rangatahi Inc - Rangatahi Development Award

- Te Reo Irirangi O Te Hiku O Te Ika Trust - Best Not-for-Profit Award

- Te Runanga O Te Rarawa - Excellence in Environmental Management and Awareness Award.

- If you have any business news, tips or ideas contact me at biz@north ernadvocate.co.nz or (09) 470 2838.