| 33 T T Virginia Wright It started with growing potatoes… Landpower recently opened its purpose-built facility in Christchurch, Landpower New Zealand REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Founded 50 years ago, Landpower New Zealand has become one of New Zealand’s pre-eminent farming machinery centres. CEO Richard Wilson has been with them for nearly 20 years, working alongside founders Herby and Pam Whyte, and he still enjoys telling the story of how it all began. “As a 15-year-old, Herby left school and began growing potatoes, effectively in his parents’ back yard, which he sold at the gate down in Invercargill. His parents said ‘you can’t do that all your life’, and so he did an apprenticeship at a local engineering firm, but kept growing potatoes. “It got to the point that he was growing so many potatoes by hand that he thought ‘this isn’t sustainable’, and he bought a mechanical harvester through the local people, who were importing them at the time. It made such a huge difference to his business that he wanted to do it for other people, and so he started this journey of importing potato harvesters into New Zealand and the rest is history, basically – it’s grown and grown and grown. “He’s developed relationships with a number of European manufacturers, and what was a young 15-year-old’s dream has turned into, in New Zealand terms, a relatively large organisation employing hundreds of people. So, a totally self-made individual and he’s an inspiration, still nearly as involved as he was 50 years ago.” The second potato harvester that soon followed the first was a GRIMME, a brand that now sits alongside other world-class manufacturers specialising in the farming sector in New Zealand and Australia, such as CLAAS, Amazone, and Vaderstad. Landpower’s relationships with them all goes back decades, and the company values the longevity of those relationships with premium farm machinery manufacturers in Europe, which are at the heart of what they do, as Richard explains. “Our role is to bring those machines into New Zealand and Australia and distribute them through a retail network, a group of dealers – some of which we own, some of which are franchised. We sell effectively to agricultural contractors and farmers all over New Zealand, so our task then becomes supporting those dealers and customers with parts and workshop services.” A tangible sign of Landpower’s commitment to supporting its customers is the worldclass, purpose-built facility recently opened in Christchurch, which is designed to use the latest in agricultural technology to do exactly that. Plus, it brings under one roof their former retail store, a dedicated training centre, a parts warehouse and support office. It also houses an area where farmers can view and test out equipment first-hand, a reassuring part of purchasing what is a big-ticket item. It sits alongside six retail service workshop bays, two advanced training bays, and a parts distribution centre that holds in excess of 30,000 part lines. Landpower understands that time is money on these machines, and if one happens to break down they have teams at the ready to get it working again as fast as possible, wherever it is. At least as important as all these concrete tools, however, are the three values that underpin what they do, as Richard explains: “Front up. If there’s an issue, deal with it and solve it. In it together. We know we’re at our best when we work together, so finding a solution that suits everybody from our suppliers through to our customers to get a better outcome for all. Keep growing; which for us means always trying to improve, staying on top of new technology, being curious and keeping that spirit of growth and ambition.” WE ARE PROUD TO BE THE ARCHITECTS FOR THE NEW FACILITY OF LANDPOWER SHEPPARD & ROUT ARCHITECTS sheprout.com
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