Miranda Burdon claims Family Business award

Miranda Burdon with SIr William Gallagher. Photo / Supplied

If you love mushrooms, there's a good chance that you've tucked into some of the 4.5 million hand picked by Meadow Mushrooms every week.

The business, which was started on the island of Cyprus in the 1960s by former Cabinet Minister Philip Burdon and friend Roger Giles, has been awarded the EY 2018 Family Business of Excellence Award.

When intercommunal violence on Cyprus led Burdon and Giles to move the operation back to New Zealand, mushrooms weren't a huge part of the national cuisine. The pair were able to introduce much of the nation to mushrooms — fresh, frozen and canned.

"Meadow Mushrooms is a classic entrepreneurial story," says Miranda Burdon, Philip's daughter and chair of the company.

"Founded on borrowings and what seemed a crazy idea to many, my father and Roger did everything they could to make it work. They treated the business as something that needed to grow and endure, ploughing profit back into building capability internally and weathering the storms the business faced." The Burdon family eventually bought out the Giles interests.

"The mushroom farm is part of our extended family, and always will be," says Miranda Burdon. "We have grown up with all of us working in the business at different times and now the next generation is wanting to do the same."

Today, Meadow Mushrooms is the leading mushroom supplier nationwide. It's a vertically integrated business managing the entire operation from spawn at one end to distribution and marketing at the other and everything in between.

For example, the company sources local wheat straw, chicken manure and gypsum for its compost.

The used growing medium is still packed with nutrients and is reused on gardens and farms.

The sustainability of the business environmentally, socially and economically is central to the decision making says Miranda.

"We relate well to the multigenerational concept of kaitiakitanga as this enables us to approach decision making slightly differently. We employ almost 600 individuals and our mushrooms can be found everywhere from supermarkets, to fancy restaurants, to smaller fruit and vegetable stores. They all rely on us, so it is important we do a good job for them as well as for the business."

The business is evolving rapidly. Kiwis are discovering that the humble mushroom is a superfood with plenty of goodness and little of the fats, sodium, sugar and cholesterol we are told to avoid.

On the production front, technology has taken great leaps in recent years.

The business has taken advantage of technological developments, most recently spending around $100 million moving from old style tray farms to new shelf based production, says Burdon.

It may not sound revolutionary to the public, but the change has streamlined business operations, creating a more efficient and safer workplace for employees and further improved the company's environmental footprint.

Plenty more disruptive technologies are waiting in the wings. "It's really important to us to be innovative, adaptive and agile," says Burdon.

"The marketplace is constantly changing, creating new opportunities and challenges. This is what excites us."