Peanut payout: He’s one of our most colourful entrepreneurs and businessmen, who worries that a new generation is too focused on marketing degrees and not enough on a can-do attitude. In a wide-ranging interview, Pic Picot reveals he’s sold a majority stake in his famous peanut butter company.
A private Australian firm has bought a majority stake in the famous Kiwi peanut butter firm Pic’s – a multimillion-dollar deal hailed by the man who formed the company with the help of a concrete mixer 18 years ago.
The hugely successful Nelson-based company is now 51.3% owned by Melbourne-based Scalzo Foods, a family-owned food and ingredient supply business that started almost 50 years ago.
“It’s been a fantastic ride,” says Pic Picot, the Kiwi entrepreneur who still holds 42.4% of the company and will continue to be fully involved in the business as brand ambassador.
The other 6.3% is held by Pic’s chief executive Aimee McCammon, Picot’s stepdaughter, who played the key role in brokering the deal.
While specific details have not been revealed, McCammon confirmed yesterday that it was a multimillion-dollar sale.
McCammon, who became chief executive of Pic’s in January 2023, has been working on raising capital to meet the company’s growth ambitions.
“Otherwise, we’re just going to be watching the cash,” said McCammon. That would be difficult, “because you can’t execute any of Pic’s great ideas when you’ve got no money.”
The company, which has 50 staff, will continue to operate out of Nelson, where it runs its factory at one of the city’s biggest attractions, Pic’s Peanut Butter World.
And Pic’s is reassuring customers that it will be retaining its recipes and original principles of sourcing the highest-quality peanuts.
Scalzo is a massive ingredients supply business, which started in Australia in 1977. It has had an Auckland office since 1994 and a warehouse and manufacturing plant at East Tāmaki since 2012.
According to its website, it has more than 300 staff and $400 million in annual operating revenue across Australia and New Zealand.
Pic Picot indicated Scalzo might eventually buy the entire company, although McCammon remains open-minded about the family staying in the business.
A new shareholders’ agreement and board of directors had been established – herself, Scalzo managing director Michael Scalzo and an independent director, Nicola O’Rourke, meaning there was not a controlling stake. Under the shareholders’ agreement, McCammon has full scope to continue executing the agreed business plan.
Pic Picot told the Herald: “I’ve done some management courses with people who own family farms and things.
“And you think, oh, that’s very noble. A farm’s been in the family for five generations.
“But honestly, if the kids aren’t into it, if it’s not everybody’s dream thing, if it doesn’t present the opportunities that moving on might do ... it can be as much of a millstone as a legacy.
“I always thought that if it all turns to s*** tomorrow, it would have been a wonderful ride. It’s not turning to s*** by any means. It’s been a fantastic ride.”
McCammon – a highly regarded executive and board director who has previously held senior positions in the advertising and post-production industries – says she is loving the Pic’s role and would like to think the family can continue in the business.
She had seen Scalzo itself building a new, third generation of family members working in its business.
“I’d love to think that could be my kids or my nieces and nephews, but I actually think protecting the company and the legacy is the most important thing, and we’ll do what’s right by that.
“I have seen people run businesses into the ground by being delusional.
“You never do the wrong thing by the company, because you can kill a legacy.
“Companies go out of business, and we’re seeing it all the time at the moment in New Zealand, and particularly in the food sector. I reckon fortnightly, we’re seeing liquidations over the last couple of years.”
Both Picot and McCammon are adamant that Pic’s will stay true to its original purpose and principles of producing high-quality peanut butter – and that the new ownership structure affords them that opportunity.
Picot established the company in 2007, using a concrete mixer in his garage to roast peanuts because he was so disgusted by the sugary ingredients of existing peanut butter products.
From then selling a few dozen jars at the local market, the company has grown rapidly in a relatively short period.
It’s moved to bigger factories several times in Nelson over the past 18 years and has now established a market share in New Zealand of about 40%.
Pic’s Peanut Butter World - which houses the original concrete mixer as an attraction - draws thousands of visitors a year.
In an interview for The Great New Zealand Road Trip editorial series, Pic Picot was certainly on form – and as colourful as ever. He spoke as he was enjoying a pedicure. “It’s such a treat.”
He remains officially involved with Pic’s as a brand ambassador.
“I go off to food shows and kiss babies and thrust peanut butter at people and explain to them how much they will enjoy giving me their money,” he says with a laugh.
He’s just turned 73 but shows no sign of slowing down – either professionally or personally. And that’s even as he lives with macular degeneration and the slow deterioration of his eyesight.
It means he can’t drive, although that hasn’t stopped him from buying a new BYD electric vehicle for people to use and give him a lift if needed. (He’s reasonably famous for hitching rides to work in the Nelson region).
“I had a vehicle already. It was an old manual Ford Ranger, but I found that with different people driving it, a lot of them hadn’t driven a manual for a very long time.
“If they’re young enough, they’ve never driven a manual in their lives, so it was quite unpleasant sitting there travelling at 30km/h in fifth gear ... bunny-hopping everywhere.”
He worries more generally about some young people’s skills.
“I was on the Heaphy Track a while ago – me and an old mate – and there were 30-odd millennials in the hut and none of them were able to light the fire.
“They were lying in front of the wood burner with pieces of ripped-up corrugated cardboard and a lighter.
“They were lighting the cardboard, sticking it in and hoping the whole thing was going to start burning.
“I thought, ‘What would these kids do if they weren’t able to flick on switches and stuff?’
“Nobody ties knots anymore. They’ve all got bloody load straps, but they don’t know how to work the load straps anyway. It’s a bit worrying, you know.”
Which gets us on to future entrepreneurs. Do we still have a No 8-wire mentality – a generation who have the wherewithal to roll out the likes of a concrete mixer to roast peanuts?
“I despair of the number of kids who dream of nothing other than going to university and studying marketing and selling more crap to people,” Picot says.
“I just did it without knowing what I was meant to be doing, and I think it worked – just by using your brains.”
Picot first fell in love with the Nelson region during a working road trip in 1972. He fitted out a van for his leather work, but it broke down, and he stayed in the region for a year.
“There were lots of hippies all over the place. I was a good, proper hippie. It was great fun. I found it a really engaging place.”
He returned in his 40s, after time overseas and in Auckland.
“Nelson was big enough at that time, it was big enough to meet new people, but it was also small enough to catch up with friends – it was just that perfect size.”
Aime McCammon says of the Pic’s company: “Nelson is our heartland. That’s definitely our home. Scalzo love it.”
Pic Picot now owns a lifestyle block at Mārahau. It is, by all accounts, his dream property, although the area has been hit hard in recent times by weather-related flooding. Luckily for Picot, he says his property escaped the worst of it.
He adores the land. “People were like, ‘Poor old Pic’s bought the farm’, as if buying the farm was like the first step towards getting buried – that’s the end of everything kind of thing.
“Honestly, I really like it. I’m planting trees and stuff – just watching those trees grow is just so cool.”
Pic’s has just been re-certified its B-corp status for environmental and social sustainability - it says it has the highest level for any peanut butter company in the world.
Pic Picot’s environmental principles certainly come through in some of his other comments when we discuss business and the economic outlook for New Zealand over the next 12 months.
“There’s always opportunity, but this obsession with economic growth ... I mean, it’s all very well for me because I’m pretty comfortably off.
“I’m not worried about where my next meal is coming from, but I’m very, very concerned about our lack of action on climate change matters.
“I see the violence of nature – we’ve just had the huge floods at Mārahau.
“The idea that ‘oh well, as long as the malls are buzzing, everything’s going to be fine’ and ‘as long as we can get the tourists coming in, in great swarms, we’ll all be happy’. But, you know, we can’t be happy if we’re cooking and drowning.”
He is optimistic that Pic’s will continue to grow, including a major focus on the Australian market. The company already has a small percentage share, and Picot himself has been travelling across the Tasman regularly this year to showcase the product at food shows.
Like McCammon, Picot says Scalzo is the right shareholder to be alongside.
“I’ve been at it for 17-18 years now, and seven years is my attention span for anything – marriages and what have you included.
“So this is well, well beyond my normal allotment that I can give anything.”
He is no longer married or partnered up. “No, not at present... I probably won’t be doing that again if my children or any of my friends have any say in it.”
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor.