New Year Honours: The master of potential

By PAUL PANCKHURST

Bill Bracks, 73, left school in Dunedin at 15 to deliver telegrams by bicycle, worked as a fireman on the railways and then joined the police before finally diving into the world of commerce.

Today, he is honoured for services to industry.

The Te Puke businessman presumes the award - he is a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit - is for his work as a chairman and mentor of business start-ups.

"That is where I get my pleasure in life, from helping small, start-up companies reach a stage of maturity where they can be handed over to professional management and taken to their ultimate potential."

He is the chairman of the Te Puke natural health products company Comvita - just listed on the stock exchange's AX board - and of three smaller companies: Api-Med Medical Honey (a Comvita subsidiary), Water Treatment Products ("huge export potential") and Beetech (honey extraction equipment, "huge international export potential").

He is also the president of the National Nutritional Foods Association.

The Bracks CV is phenomenally varied.

Job number one was in Dunedin, "delivering telegrams by bicycle".

"I came from a pretty poor background. I lost my mother when I was very young and we couldn't afford to send me to school.

"So I left school at 15 and delivered telegrams and then I went from there to the railways and became a fireman."

Next step was joining the police, working as a detective in Christchurch and also, for a nine-month stint, as a bodyguard to then Prime Minister Sid Holland.

Bracks says he's not kidding about the last bit. "I could even take you to the place where I stood for many a long night."

He got a business education courtesy of the multinationals.

In 1957 - aged 27 - he took a salesman's job at oil company Standard-Vacuum (later Mobil) and three years later began a 20-year stint with W.R. Grace, eventually becoming the divisional manager of Cryovac, an innovator in export packaging, especially for meat.

"We supplied the original lamb and beef cut packaging equipment and materials in New Zealand, dating back to the early 1960s."

Bracks was also involved with export cheese packaging and reported back on the state on arrival of Australian and New Zealand exports to Europe.

"I got into this mode of thinking, 'well, that [exporting] is where New Zealand's future lies'."

After retiring at 60, he turned to consulting, getting involved with companies such as Comvita and Naturally Native New Zealand Plants, where he was founding chairman of what is described as "the largest native plant operation in New Zealand".

Looking back at the variety of his jobs and experiences - he also had roles running an iron foundry and an icecream company - Bracks says: "I guess it could never happen these days, because that's not the way commerce operates - everyone wants graduates sitting at the helm from the beginning."