Longstanding Otago business Harraways and Sons is investing millions of dollars into its oat mill, the only operational one in Aotearoa, to meet growing demand for the healthy and humble locally-grown oat.
The company, known as Harraways, opened at Dunedin’s GreenIsland suburb in 1867, and its breakfast range, among other products, is found in most New Zealand supermarkets.
It also supplies oats to local oat milk producers and to biscuit and muesli bar producers.
Chief executive Henry Hawkins said it was investing $11 million in capital expenditure into the factory to grow capacity.
“People eating healthier and returning to New Zealand made for some good growth for Harraways,” he said.
“We’ve reached a good point in our business where we are at capacity in terms of volume through our mill, particularly, and we just need to plan for the future.
“Therefore, we need to upgrade some of our equipment to cope with that, and that includes new boilers, new grain intakes for all of our oats that we bring in, and also our milling equipment.”
He said each month, the factory employing 60 full-time staff and casual staff (like students from the nearby University of Otago) produced around 1500 metric tonnes of products, like rolled oats.
“We just really need to automate some of our production to be able to keep up with demand and try and reduce some overhead costs that come with manual labour.”
Ninety-five per cent of the company’s oats and grains were sourced in New Zealand, with the remainder being imported for its organic range.
The business contracted around 50 growers across Central Otago, Queenstown and Southland to process around 16,000 metric tonnes of oats and grains each year.
Growers were subject to the company’s zero-tolerance stance on the use of chemical defoliants and glyphosate on the crops.
New Zealand Food Safety (NZFS) recently reviewed and ultimately maintained the ingredient’s maximum residue limits (MRL) on food at 0.1 milligrams per kilogram for wheat, barley and oat crops, but increasing it to 6 milligrams per kilo for field peas.
Harraway and Sons chief executive Henry Hawkins with some of its South Island-sourced oats range.
Hawkins said he was “very pleased” to see that NZFS “have seen and made sense” not to increase the MRL for glyphosate on oat crops, following public consultation.
“That has been a particular hot topic and something that we understand and know consumers are very concerned about,” he said.
“And so we’re very watchful and want to make sure that we are able to keep our position, which is no glyphosate in our product.”
It came as the Environmental Protection Authority was facing further court action by the Environmental Law Initiative around the regulator’s decision not to reassess the active ingredient in herbicide Roundup.
Hawkins said the company was well-supported by New Zealand retailers and shoppers, despite continued competition from imports on the shelf.
Harraways exported for several decades to Singapore, and was capitalising on adding oats to the region’s popular rice porridge congee, he said.
He said it “fully intended” to obtain a GrainMark certification by the Foundation for Arable Research to showcase its use of New Zealand oats only in the majority of its range, following the renovations.
Harraways Rolled Oats received the Product Lifetime Achievement Award at the NZ Food Awards in October.
