Associate Education Minister David Seymour, in charge of the programme, even said he saw the development as potentially being “very good” in the long-term, once “sensitive” processes had been completed. He had “clearly not” been happy with some of the service from the provider.
Libelle Group, which was contracted by Compass Group NZ to deliver about 125,000 meals to students daily as part of the Government programme, was put into liquidation on Tuesday morning.
A statement from one of the liquidators, David Webb of Deloitte NZ, said they were “undertaking a full and urgent review of all of Libelle’s operations”. Their immediate focus was to work with employees and stakeholders to find a way forward, including “ensuring students around New Zealand continue to receive their school lunches”.
Webb confirmed to the Herald just over 500 staff are affected.
Paul Harvey from The School Lunch Collective — the grouping of organisations providing meals — said it was a “difficult situation” for Libelle, which has offered residential catering, tuckshop solutions and school catering services for the past 20 years.
“To minimise disruption, Compass Group has taken immediate steps to support Libelle, including ensuring staff wages are paid and keeping kitchen facilities running.”
Te Puke Intermediate School says its school lunches were delivered so hot, containers have exploded.
Speaking to reporters, Seymour would not go into the details of what had led to the liquidation due to “sensitive commercial matters”.
“If I start judging what got them into trouble, then I’m going to be potentially disrupting some pretty sensitive negotiations, so I don’t want to do that,” he said.
But he did not believe it was a “bad” development. Instead, “in the long-term, it’s very good”.
Asked if he was pleased with the development as Libelle had been involved with some well-reported issues with the programme, Seymour repeated that if he made comments such as that, he would be “prejudicing some of the sensitive negotiations going on”.
“All I would say is our priority is continuity of supply, quality for the children, and in the fullness of time, I’m very confident people will see the full record and see that we’ve actually acted very well, sometimes with some difficult circumstances.”
He did not want to suggest the Government would use this to “reset” the programme as “I don’t want to make it sound like an accusation of any party”.
But Seymour said he had “clearly not” been happy with Libelle’s service.
“There has been times we have had failures, and I have been very upfront about those.
“I have even apologised and written a card to one young boy who was affected by poor service. Obviously, there has been problems. We have been really open about that, and we are moving towards a time where we will have solved lots of the problems we are having.”
The Herald asked Seymour if he could guarantee whether all children currently being provided a lunch by Libelle would continue to get a free meal.
“Our number one priority through all of this has been maintaining the volume and improving the quality,” he said. “The quality will improve, the volume will be maintained, and we will see children prescribed to get these lunches getting these lunches.”
It wasn’t anticipated that any service would be stopped, he said. Compass, the catering company that subcontracted Libelle, will take over the operations “during this transition”, Seymour said.
He said the Government had been “keeping our options open”.
“I was a one-time boy scout, and what we do is we prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” Seymour added.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour facing the media after food provider Libelle Group went into liquidation. NZME photograph by Mark Mitchell.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, under questioning from Labour’s Chris Hipkins, said the Government had been assured the liquidation would not lead to children going hungry.
“Despite the liquidation, the school lunches programme is not at risk. Obviously, that’s a commercial matter, but our key thing is to make sure that we are getting what we have contracted for and that that is delivered.”
Hipkins told reporters the liquidation was “a concern”.
“I think one of the things we had under the previous programme was an arrangement whereby if there were concerns about one of the lunch providers, there was an opportunity to switch to a different lunch provider.”
The Labour leader wanted the Government to act urgently to address the troubled programme.
“I think there’s a total lack of leadership when it comes to fixing issues around school lunches. The fact the Prime Minister still won’t step in and they’re now saying it could be Term 2 before these issues are actually resolved, these are a daily concern for schools.”
The Prime Minister said the incident last week with a child being burnt “was unacceptable” and Seymour was “working his way through the issues to make sure that we get better-quality food and better on-time performance”.
Seymour said he expects issues to be fixed by the start of Term 2. He highlighted one improvement made: on-time lunch delivery was 99.74% on Monday.
“It comes down to getting the diaries to align,” Seymour said. “I’m sure we’ll meet very soon, but you know, I don’t know if the New Zealand public’s main interest is me and Erica getting together. I am sure we will.”
Jamie Ensor is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub Press Gallery office.
