UPBEAT ROCK MUSIC Captions by Alana Drayton. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 Hello and welcome to Rural Delivery. Family is at the heart of many of our rural enterprises and runs through all our stories today. This week, we visit the family-owned-and-operated apple-growing, packing and exporting company, Taylor Corporation. We meet James Bailey, a fifth-generation Waikato sheep-and-beef farmer who's collaborating with others to protect the health of rivers in the region. And we find out about the flourishing family-run sheepskin and tannery business of Classic Sheepskins. Taylor Corporation is an apple grower, packer and exporter based in Hawke's Bay. It exports around a million cartons annually and can't grow enough fruit to meet demand. The business is owned and operated by Kelvin and Lynette Taylor and their three children. Oh, we're an integrated business, you know. We grow our own nursery trees and then we plant 'em out in the orchards. We got our own packing facility, and, also, we do all our own exporting. We use other exporters sometimes, but, uh, the majority is done through ourselves. Cameron, my son, and I, we do the marketing as well. Being a family business, we share in a lot of things, and it's great. There's around about 900 acres we have ` about 360, or in that vicinity ` of hectares and that. And it's all` all ages of trees, right down to just plantings, which we try to plant about, you know, 50 acres a year, or 100 acres a year, to keep going. When I was 18, I was gonna buy a new car, and then I thought otherwise, Maybe this is not the right way to go, and my father, being in the apple business too, and his father was too, that I thought I better buy some land. And where the packhouse is now, I bought my first bit of land. It was 5ha, and I was 18 years old. My son, being the fourth generation, and his kids ` they're young, still, but they` they come down, and they're interested. As far as exports, we generally pick on people that are family people overseas, sort of thing, and you get to know them better. I think it's more relaxing, talking to somebody, and we get a relationship going, and that's good, you know. It's been really excellent. As much as it's a business, it's a hobby, and we all enjoy it, and` and that's really why, you know, we wanna do the best. You know, our name's on the box, so we` you know, that's how it is. We're definitely in a growth stage. Markets are good. Everything's buoyant at the moment, so, yeah, we're` we're really hammering along at that, trying to get trees in the ground and find new machinery to get it done more efficiently. We generally target the more sweeter apple rather than the tarter ones, like Braeburn and that, which is mainly for Europe. So we've gone more for an Asian palette, sort of thing ` so Queen and, um, Royal Galas and that sort of thing. We do try and target family businesses where you're dealing with the owner that, you know, you build up a trust. Everyone thinks Asia is, you know, the cheaper product, but there's a lot of wealth over there, and if you can tap into that, they'll pay good money, but it's gotta be the best. It was daunting, but we found it relatively easy. Once we went in, doorknocking, or some came to us, it flew. We put, uh, the new plant in, and the volume that goes through our shed, would` you know, a ton of apples every minute or couple of minutes. And we've got two stages of a packhouse, so we put in cameras for the control room. So you can imagine if a belt jams, and you've still got the volume, you can have 1m-high apples all on your conveyors, so we put in these cameras all` in all certain areas. All our buyers can log on 24/7, seven days of the week, on, and see the plant going. So there is no secrets, but we do encourage all our buyers to come to NZ, walk around the orchards. We have dinner at home. They meet my kids. And that was important, um` that's where I brought in Mandarin. Going over there with the languages, I was embarrassed, sort of thinking, you know, you can talk to them in English, and I could only say hello, ni hao. So I` From a very young age ` from you know, I think my youngest was around six months when he started ` I introduced Mandarin to all my kids, so all the grandchildren now are learning Mandarin. We partnered up with Oritain seven, eight years ago. It was a bit of an expense. What happened was our fruit` We were selling it, so it goes to a pre-packer. In Europe, it gets sold in big container lots. You know, in big consignments. It could be 18 kilos. It goes to a pre-packer, and then they'll repack it into a clamshell or something like that. Well, NZ is known for the safe, you know, quality fruit, so what the pre-packer was doing is buying cheaper fruit from, you know, another country, and they were mixing and blending it in with NZ` well, it was our fruit. Taylor's fruit. So when it got to the supermarket, they were doing tests, because residues are a big thing over there, you know, like it is everywhere, and we sell ours with near-nil residue. We're getting really close. So then when they found a chemical on our fruit, you know, they were shocked. (LAUGHS) We were shocked. Oritain come in. They do soil samples, fruit samples, water samples. So they're taking the` the trace elements. I think there's 42 isotopes they're measuring. They can now, with all our library samples, get an apple and say within 300m of it being harvested or picked. So if there is something wrong with it, and the scientists prove it` it's our fruit, or they can prove it was down the road. They can say it's NZ fruit, Hawke's Bay fruit. You know, it's easy to say if it's Southern Hemisphere fruit because of the water` the isotopes in the water. So it was done is an insurance. Now we're actually using it to add value to the end consumer. We roughly do around 200 ton to 250 ton per day. We work a 10-hour day, and, yeah, we go six days a week. We have around 60 permanent workers that work for us all year round, and then we bring in RSEs, and we also use locals. It kinda gets up to around, uh, the 250, sometimes 300 mark, totally, from packhouse to the fields. With the RSE workers, we get 'em from Tonga, Tuvalu. And in the packhouse, we get 'em from Thailand. And we accommodate them all. We pay half their airfares in here. They're good workers, all reliable and turn up on time, which is very good. People think it's just picking apples or boring jobs, but it's quite different to that. Today, we have our own IT staff who write all our own programmes. We do foreign currency. You know, we're exporting our fruit ourselves, and, uh` and in the nursery, we grow our own trees, so it's, uh` it's right through, you know. There's all sorts of jobs. When we return, we meet sheep-and-beef farmer and environmentalist James Bailey. UPBEAT ROCK MUSIC Welcome back. James Bailey's family has been farming sheep and beef on Momona for generations. After some overseas exposure to environmental initiatives, James returned to NZ and became involved in the start-up of an environmental charity, Sustainable Coastlines. He's also the dry stock representative on the Waikato Healthy Rivers Collaborative Stakeholder Group This group is helping to shape Council policy for water quality in the region. Sheep and beef unit here. 470ha. Predominantly running Coopworth ewes and a Hereford breeding herd and supplying yearling bulls to the local dairy market. Much of our lamb goes to the, uh, Whole Foods Market in the US through Te Kuiti Meats. It's a family block, so I'm fifth-generation here on this block. I took it over in a share-farming arrangement with my father seven years ago and have been managing it since. Before I came back to the farm, I was sort of involved in a few environmental initiatives overseas, and that sort of came back to NZ, and so I had a bit of a environmental slant to start with. But it was when I really, sort of, started seeing the advantages to the business and how you can balance the two is when I saw, um, you know, the need to push for not just an environmental thinking for the farm, but, uh, just an overall, sort of, sustainability aspect to` to what we're doing here. It's good Tirau Ash soils. We do have some steeper gullies, and we have changed our stocking policy to reflect that until we get our steeper gullies and our land-management units tidied up. Um, I'm working with the Waikato Regional Council and the Healthy Rivers Wai Ora project, which is a policy plan change which is all coming to a head very quickly. We'll be recommending a plan change with regards to freshwater management. And, um, I'm representing the sheep-and-beef sector on a collaborative stakeholder group. I'm one of, uh, 24 people sitting round the table, trying to come up with a way to practically improve the fresh water in the Waikato and Waipa Rivers and move forward together as a community. In some ways, it can be seen as a bit of a scary business, restoring, uh, such a massive body of water, or bodies of water, um, and the time frames reflect that. We're talking, sort of, 80 to 100 years, and, um` and quite a lot of costs, but, um, alongside that, we're not the only region. Every region's sort of moving towards this through the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. Here in the Waikato, we've got, uh, a river-iwi settlement document called the Vision and Strategy which, um, pertains to swimmability and` and mahanga kai, um, so that's` that's setting us up to achieve those goals in that time frame. COWS MOO Beef + Lamb's come up with the Land and Environment Plan to help support farmers in our environment space, so what the plan involves is about taking a stocktake of the farmer's land and water resources ` 'so really having an overview of the farming operation.' It's about farmers actually having a tool which guides them through the planning process. So what the toolkit involves is about looking at, um, doing a swat-analysis on, uh, the farms, really. So, um, looking at their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and, uh, threats of the operation and really, um, hammering into those opportunities and minimalising those threats on farm. Um, I think a lot of farmers have a land or environment plan, uh, but it's in their head. But, um, what the Beef + Lamb Plan is it's a great guideline and documentation which helps, um, take farmers through it and, you know, at the end of it, they come out with a response plan for what they're actually gonna do on farm, and they get to prioritise what things they wanna look at. James has done a plan and, um, looking at his operation, he's done a lot of riparian planting ` planting hills, stopping erosion. Uh, he knows not to have heavy stock on hill country, so he runs sheep on the sidelings through the winter period. So, um, it just really helps guide the thinking process for farmers. So they've` the feedback from them's been really positive. This is one of the first riparian projects that we started doing. We planted 1500 trees in here about six years ago. It was quite an expensive project for quite a small chunk of the farm, really ` like, a small chunk of the overall catchment. Looks lovely, and, uh, you know, we're really proud of it. But the way that we've moved to in terms of addressing our environmental concerns is being` is a bit more strategic. Trying to get the bones of the farm right first and then coming in with these aesthetic and, you know, environmentally functional mitigations once we've got the structure right. That's been the important bit. Well, the first thing for us was really hooking into the water reticulation system. There was a lot of paddocks that didn't have reticulated water, and by getting water there, we're just giving ourselves options. Not just, uh, to keep stock out of the waterways, but, um, better stock health, and, um, down the track, it's gonna lead us to give more options around getting minerals out to those paddocks through a Dosatron system or something like that, perhaps. Probably the key thing has been referring to the land-use capability of the farm. So, diving that up into sections and then fencing, pretty much, according to that. That has been` And I've seen it, like, the environmental improvement, just from doing that without the riparian stuff. The riparian stuff is then gonna enhance that, you know, massively, but making those steps to, uh, improve the management of the farm, the flow of the farm, um, you know, saving time and then also gets you halfway down the track of starting to set up some of those mitigation, um` more intensified mitigation techniques. The work we've done with our farm environment plan, um` Hey, sure, there's definitely a lot of feel-good stuff around it, you know ` a lot of pride in the farm as you start to see things taking shape. But, um, there's also some real value in the economic aspects of the farm. Firstly, I'd say, primarily through management ` easier stock flows and, um, if you set it up right, you'll be saving time and money. Um, also better pasture management as you start working on the more productive areas of your farm. And, hey, listen, down the track, consumers around the world are looking for that environmental tick. And, um, as the plan changes` is pushing accreditation of and some assurance around what you're doing on your farm, that's gonna bode well for being able to put a marketing story together down the track. We'll be back soon to find out what it takes to run a woolskin tannery in NZ. UPBEAT ROCK MUSIC Hello again. Classic Sheepskins is a Hawke's Bay family-owned sheepskin tannery. It's survived since it began in 1969. This is even more remarkable considering the competition its endured from overseas tanneries overtime. Marketing Manager Kieran Callaghan explains how the business operates. Classic Sheepskins is a woolskin tannery. It started in 1969 to add value to woolskins that we get from the works. So all our products comes from the meatworks, and we then tan it and sell it for all sorts of different purposes. My dad started it with three other partners in 1969. He is still the only remaining member of those partners. One dropped out quite early on, and then there was another two that stayed with the business up until just recently. So I got into the business to add, uh, more of a e-commerce side to it, and there was also one of the other partner's son who took over the tanning side of it up until just recently. It was fist started for wool tiling because of wool's insulation properties and its fireproof properties. As that market died down, it moved into car-seat covers, and that really took off. Basically had a pattern for every car, make and model. And now that market has slowed again, we've moved into several different markets, including buffing bonnets for the car-manufacturing business, just general rugs ` we're quite big in the United States ` and then we've got a huge footwear side of the business which is huge in, obviously, Europe and Scandinavia, where it's a lot colder. Generally, the raw product hasn't changed too much over the years. It's more the` the amount of the product. We used to have a lot of sheep here, as everyone knows. Now, with the rise of dairy farms and that side of things, the sheep became less available, so that affected the skin price. Um, and also more merino ` we don't tan a lot of merino. It's not great for tanning. Better for the use of wool. So that's affected our quantities, but all in all, the skins are pretty much the same. The future of this business has changed a little bit. We're looking to niche market a little bit more. We're NZ-made, and we're a boutique tannery that produces high-quality products, and so whatever markets that produces for us, we'll tap into. This is a medium-sized tannery. It's quite small compared to what's in China. We have about 40 staff. We are seasonal, though, with the lambing season, so we can go up to 60 staff. We have a few out-workers as well. We process about 2300 skins a week, and that's during the season, and on the off-season, it's about 1200 skins a week. It's a fairly big process. It's quite labour-intensive; that's why a lot of the tanneries have gone offshore. So we have some challenges with that, but we're still going forward. We get the skins from the works. We then flesh them and give them a slight trim. Then they go into these baths behind me for about 24 hours, and that starts the process. They're pickled, and then they're chrome-tanned, which is mainly an aluminium-based tan. The fleshing process opens up the skin so the tanning chemicals can penetrate it and also takes any extra residue fat off it. In these baths are tanning chemicals, similar to picking anything you would at home ` vegetables, etc. The skins go through a similar process where the chemicals penetrate the skin, and the main process is locking that hair in. The tanning process is dealing with the pH. What we do is we lock in the tanning chemicals to preserve that hair. It's quite tricky with sheepskin because a lot of it needs warm temperatures, and leather doesn't react well to warm temperatures, so it is a bit of an art of balancing the pH with the heat. There's a lot of things that can go wrong with the tanning process. One is shrinkage of the skin from it being too hot, or the other thing is the hairs aren't tanned in fully, and so you get hair slip once the product is finished. The paddles move the skin around, makes sure everything gets equal amount of chemical and dye through it. We also dye skins for different uses, and so they need to be pushed around so that dye can penetrate the whole skin. So once they come out of these baths, they're then pinned out and dried. They have to be dried in their natural shape, otherwise they'll shrink. Once they're dried, they come off the driers, and they're quite stiff and pulled out into shape. We then add a little bit more moisture back to them so that we can work with them. We then put them through a degreaser stage to get that natural grease out of the wool, and then they go through the main manufacturing process which involves combing the skin, ironing the skin, and staking the leather. This is our footwear department. We tan the skins right through to a process where we can then manufacture them into all sorts of slippers and boots. Everything from a, kind of, slipper-sock up to a full, kind of, knee-high sheepskin boot. This side came about with the different types of wool that you get on sheepskins. The shorter, more dense wool makes perfect footwear. This is a value-added side of the business. It gives us something different to do with the sheepskins. Instead of just selling single rugs, we can now sell footwear, add value to the sheepskin, and it gives us another market to enter into. The main selling point for our product is that it's NZ-made. It's almost like a piece of NZ. Everyone recognises sheep with NZ, and to have that on their feet ` it's warm, the natural properties are brilliant. So that's the main selling point. We sell a variety of different skins. We don't just tan sheepskins. We do deerskin, tahrskins, cattlehides and everything in between. This is a deerskin. We do a lot of deerskin for farmers and hunters as well. Um, we have a commission-tan business, and we do any type of skin from as small as a rabbit up to a cowhide. We had quite a lot of enquiries from farmers and lifestyle-blockers to get things tanned for themselves, so we looked at it, and it did look like a good side of the business, so we got into it, and it's been really really well received, and we really enjoy doing products for farmers. For more information on our stories and upcoming primary sector events, visit our website... Or if you've missed an episode, and you want to catch up on it, you can view it through TVNZ On Demand using the keyword Rural Delivery. Next week, we discover how high-value materials are being created from NZ wool at Texus Fibre. We take a tour around the vast glasshouse and orchard enterprise of Southern Belle and find out about the journey from traditional dairy farming to artisan cheese and milk production at Wangapeka Cheese. And that's all we have time for today. We hope to see you again next week. Captions by Alana Drayton www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016