Huge Greenlea company donation turns spotlight on size of rural storm devastation

Meat exporter Greenlea is a major rural benefactor, its support including the central North Island rescue helicopter. Photo / Supplied

Exporter Greenlea Premier Meats has given a whopping $2 million to rural recovery efforts in the storm-battered East Coast, Northland and Hawke’s Bay regions, asking that the horticulture sector get a share of the donation.

Waikato-based, family-owned Greenlea is one of the country’s biggest meat companies, and the donation was made through its philanthropic Greenlea Foundation Trust, which receives a significant portion of the company’s profits each year. Among the trust’s beneficiaries is the central North Island rescue helicopter service.

While the Greenlea trust gifts several million dollars a year to more than 15 community and welfare organisations, including St Vincent de Paul, the donation to assist farmers and growers in the flood and cyclone-devastated regions is its single biggest yet, said Greenlea managing director Tony Egan.

The funds were committed to the Rural Support Trust (RST) to distribute and use at its discretion.

RST national and Waikato-Coromandel region chairman Neil Bateup said the Greenlea donation was the biggest single corporate offering the rural welfare organisation had received for recovery efforts.

The Greenlea trust had given $1m to get immediate relief such as helicopter food and supply drops to cut-off rural properties under way and had committed another $1m to RST and other rural support initiatives.

Egan, whose family owns and operates Greenlea’s three Waikato beef operations, which export to more than 40 countries, said the donation was made for several reasons.

“It’s partly because the rural community has supported us, partly because of the severity of the events, and because we saw others giving generously as well.”

Though headquartered in Hamilton, Greenlea has a connection with the hard-hit East Coast having started 80 years ago as a butcher’s shop in Gisborne.

RTS’s Bateup said the Ballance fertiliser company had donated $1m and invited its shareholders to donate some of their dividends, and the Tatua dairy cooperative had given $200,000. Supermarket chain Foodstuffs had given $50,000 and the Hugo Charitable Trust, established in the memory of livestock businessman and philanthropist Hugh Green, had contributed significantly.

Meanwhile, dozens of regular fundraising efforts, such as golf tournaments and events by clubs and small groups, were also raising money.

RST has a Givealittle page which had raised around $55,000, Bateup said. Some other companies had organised their own recovery and support efforts.

Neil Bateup, national chairman of the Rural Support Trust. Photo / Supplied

Recovery support was a marathon, not a sprint, he said.

For some farmers and growers in the devastated regions, recovery would take “years”. Their land had washed away or was buried under silt, their fences smashed - at least one farmer was faced with a $100,000 bill for fence repairs - crops and orchards wrecked.

Bateup said Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay were getting the biggest percentage of donations having been hardest hit this year, with Northland, Coromandel, Wairarapa, Tararua and north Waikato casualties also receiving financial support. He said Northland was struggling - kumara crops for example had been wiped out - but had tended “to be forgotten”.

The national RST board, comprising chairs from all New Zealand RST regions, decided the distribution percentages of donated funds. Recovery initiatives included providing specialist advisors and professionals to help affected farmers and growers get on their feet and plan their future, financial and management advice, and counselling. Events focused on technology transfer were part of the mix.

RTS’ function was to provide “wrap around support” for the rural community and help build its resilience, Bateup said.

Demand for its support services had soared in the past five years, with the Waikato RST organisation alone growing from a team of 20 to 50, he said. Most of the national RST organisation’s 350-strong team are volunteers like Bateup, who these days works fulltime on RST matters. He has a dairy farm in the Waikato which is run by a manager.

Bateup thinks the growth in demand is due to RST’s website and help line becoming better known, its perceived independence and offer of free, confidential support, and because of the escalating financial, compliance and labour pressures on primary food producers.

Perhaps RST’s greatest appeal to rural communities is that “its teams are built of rural people” who easily relate to the challenges of farming and rural life, he said.