End of an era for family enterprise Te Puke Engineering

Te Puke Engineering owner Paul Thomas has sold up. The business was started by his father Geoff in the 1950s. Photo/Stuart Whitaker

Paul Thomas is hoping a few things eventuate in the coming weeks.

"Probably, I would like to get to use those unworn golf clubs. And probably the motor on the boat that only goes three or four times a year will go a little bit more." he says.

"I'm not sure - I can only hope."

Yesterday, Paul closed the doors on Te Puke Engineering - the business his father Geoff started in 1952 - for the last time.

He has sold up and is going into semi-retirement.

He's had 44 years at the helm, but despite the company's closure, Paul isn't one to look back.

"I don't feel a great sense of nostalgia that it's going," he says.

"It's just part of our progress as people to move to another wee part of our lives."

Geoff and his wife Joyce built the workshop with the house behind 66 years ago.

"They saw Te Puke as somewhere up and coming. That's why they moved here from the Manawatu, and he started the business and it slowly grew over the years.

"He did a lot of the cool stores and packhouses. There probably aren't many buildings in Te Puke that don't have some aspect of something we've done."

After serving his apprenticeship in Tauranga and a stint overseas, Paul began working for his father when he was 22.

"All I knew was engineering at the time. When you live behind an engineering firm, I won't say you learn how to weld before you can walk, but it's something a little bit similar."

He says the workshop was a playground for him and his sister Dennise, but only to an extent.

"I don't think the OSH man existed in our day - we wandered around a little bit, but were also made aware that it was a dangerous place,' he says.

When Geoff retired, Paul took over and continued with business as usual. But things were about to change.

"In 1980, for some unknown reason, I decided to get into politics through the old Te Puke Borough Council."

He was deputy mayor of Te Puke in the late 1980s and won a seat on the Western Bay of Plenty District Council after local government reorganisation. He was Western Bay deputy mayor from 2011 to 2014.

"I was still trying to juggle engineering, but was often away two or three days a week.
He says health and safety has been one of the major areas of change in the industry.

"[These days] you will hire a little lifting frame. In our day it was a forklift with three or four kiwifruit bins on the top and up you went, but when OSH people saw it and hit the roof, we finally realised we had to change and get a bit more modernised from that point of view."

Around 10 years ago, focus shifted into the agricultural side of engineering.

"I guess I was getting too old to climb around the top of buildings and after a couple of falls from a reasonable height, I decided it was time to stay on the ground. We moved into tractors, sprayers, anything to do with orchards and we did some small structural type work - and that's where we sit today."

There isn't much he hasn't seen but admits that "occasionally I will sit down and look at a job and say 'I've never done this before'."

There's one thing he didn't realise about shutting shop.

"I am going to miss the people more than I thought."

As well as golfing and getting out on the boat, travel with his wife Karyl is on the agenda.
"In the last few years, getting married, that's been pretty special and we've bought a caravan and that's the next step along the way."

So no chance of getting back into local politics?

"I've not really given it any thought. I've given a bit more thought to going away in the caravan and about feeling the tug on that rod a little more often, or seeing my golf ball go straight rather than swing one way or the other."