Business Central December 2021

| 51 Looking after people key for haulage firm T Sue Russell Rewi Haulage took out the 2021 Maori Agribusiness Good Employer Award. Tairawhiti Awards: Rewi Haulage REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Proudly supporting Rewi Haulage Ltd. We are locally owned and operated. 61 Parkinson Street, Gisborne (06) 868 6626 Unit 3, 129 Maraekakaho Road, Hastings (06) 870 6177 61 Disraeli Street, Gisborne 06 867 0728 admin@harristyres.co.nz Congratulations for winning Maori Business Award 2021 “Ernslaw Gisborne is pleased to have been associated with Rewi Haulage Limited over the last four years” Proud to support Rewi Haulage C hubb and Agnes Rewi established Rewi Haulage Ltd in 2014. The log trans- porting firm works around the Far East Cape region and their business is based at Rangitukia, two hours north of Gisborne. “We were in logging before this time, in the early 2000’s. There was a Chinese company (Huaguang) that owned the forest in our dis- trict. It went bust and left us and many other forest operators in the district high and dry,” says Chubb. When this happened the family moved to Taupo for a few years to give their children more opportunities in education and employ- ment. Agnes and Chubb returned to the coast in 2012 and decided it was time to have con- trol over their own business and to provide employment for future generations. Today, two of Chubb’s children work with him. Hoana looks after health and safety and Alli is the company’s fleet manager. “It gives them opportunities to extend their business as well. Both of them have bought trucks.” In total, Rewi Haulage has 12 trucks of their own and another 12 subcontractors trans- porting logs to the Port of Gisborne, Onepu in Kawerau and occasionally Mount Maunganui and Napier. There’s a bright future ahead, given trees planted back in the 1990’s are now due for harvesting. Recognising the qualities embedded in the way the business conducts itself and looks after its team, Rewi Haulage was awarded the Maori Agribusiness Good Employer Award 2021, presented on 12 April at Parliament. It also came equal first with K. Williams Shearing to win Westpac 2021 Maori Owned Business Award. In June this year Hoana Materoa Rewi-Kururangi received the Industry Support Award and came runner-up in the Woman in Forestry Award, presented by the Eastland Wood Council. Hoana was recognised for her work across the industry in supporting the development of high quality health and safety procedures. Asked what he feels are the most important factors in running a good business Chubb says good, reasonable communication and honesty underpins it all. “It is not just one way. I just don’t demand for instance when dealing with clients that this is my price. I treat them with respect and dignity.” COVID brought with it strict policies for those working in the forestry industry and despite this Chubb says business has been as busy as ever. “We’ve increased business by 25% and it doesn’t look like it is going to slow down at all. Our dispatch and logistics arm has been very successful over the last two years thanks to the hard work of Agnes’s sister, Henrietta and is quietly expanding its services. We’ve just re- cently started our own small harvesting crew which will give us more diversity, as well as working alongside the local timber merchant we hope to be recovering as much usable slash from the forests as possible in the very near future.” And, as will happen, a good reputation spreads just like a bad one and Chubb says he’s got plenty of people in the district wishing to work for him. Aware of this, as his long- time drivers get older, Chubb is trying to find new areas within the business to eventually deploy them. “We look at providing them with further training so they have new skills and opportu- nities. Myself and one of our senior operators have gone through driver instructor training and once our training facility/ workshop is set up we hope to start putting our local rangitahi (youth) through classes 2-5 driver licensing as well as mechanical apprenticeships.” Chubb says he and Agnes work hard at trying to make sure they are looking after people. He emphasizes it is an important part of their Christian life-style. “Just being kind to people. It’s not always easy as we have so many different person- alities, but the bible is the greatest source of guidance for mankind.” Agnes takes care of the human resources and deals with a lot of the side issues. “It’s the unseen things which are what help you to be seen. With our two children she makes sure they stay on the straight and narrow,” says Chubb As for aspirations for the region Chubb says he would like to see a domestic mill in operation. “We’re too reliant on the export market. I’m really hoping that someone will soon see the opportunities. “We are getting so many overseas forest owners buying a lot of our logs while mills like Kawerau are shutting down. I think there are opportunities for the Provisional Growth Fund money to have been used in more beneficial ways.”