Hawke's Bay business a progressive 40 years as the backbone of a meat industry

Craig and Penny Hickson amid the celebrations with staff that have served Progressive Meats over the last 41 years. Photo / Supplied

It was a case of better late than never when Hawke's Bay success story Progressive Meats Ltd marked its 40th anniversary, with Craig Hickson still at the helm after he started the operation with a team of six on October 25, 1981.

As progressive as the name suggests, PML, starting as a frozen lamb cutting operation, grew to become one of Hawke's Bay's biggest employers of the last half century.

Staff numbers would peak at about 470. The levels have been maintained, partly filling a void left by the closure of meatworks giants Hawke's Bay Farmers Meat Co's Whakatu (1986), and century-old Nelson's Tomoana (1994).

It was at Whakatu in 1969 that Hickson started in the industry – a tradition and near right-of-passage for school leavers at a plant renowned as the biggest of its type in New Zealand, and even the Southern Hemisphere, with peak staffing of about 2000 people.

The year 1981 was a benchmark one for New Zealand, most (rather than best) remembered for the underarm bowling cricket incident in Melbourne and the tumultuous Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand.

Then there was the survival of Prime Minister's Robert Muldoon's National Party Government at an election, 34 days after PML first opened the chiller door in Kelfield Place, off Omahu Rd on the outskirts of Flaxmere, in an industrial area apparently known as Woolwich.

In short, it was a punt by Hickson, a Hastings Boys' High School old boy who in April 1980 had left a secure salaried job and sold up the house in Wellington to return to Hawke's Bay with wife Penny and their two children, to work on a vision.

"My market value as a salaried employee in 1980 was $14,000 (a year)," he recalls.

"The rental for my new work premise was $25,000. If I failed I couldn't pay the rent."

Two years later Hickson was embarking on expansion.

This included starting the purchase of shares in the property investment syndicate which owned the premises and ultimately making it through the cut-throat era of the meat industry, which saw small plants beginning slaughter operations about the time Hickson did in 1987.

Among them were Oringi, in Southern Hawke's Bay, which opened in 1982 when the national sheep population was 70 million. It closed in 2009, when that population was descending rapidly towards its current mark of under 26 million.

Hickson foresaw a drop-off in his own line – "actually ran out in 1987" – and began building slaughter facilities to move from frozen lamb cutting to the procurement, slaughter and processing of fresh lamb.

This was the start of more progressive expansion with interests developing also in Feilding, Gisborne, Oamaru and Waipukurau.

It also included establishing Progressive Leathers Ltd with Bernard Matthews NZ Ltd in 2005, and organising small groups of investors for such purchases as the entire Bernard Matthews NZ lamb business operation.

Along the way Hickson was the first to obtain provision for shift work in slaughter and boning operations in New Zealand, pioneering "commitment-style" procurement operations, and developed a commitment to employees and their families, some of them now into fourth generations at Kelfield Place.

"It wasn't planned," he says, recalling the switch from the frozen lamb operation.

Craig Hickson and wife Penny, who also worked in the company, on the big night at the Progressive Meats Ltd 40th year celebrations. Photo / Supplied

"Initially I didn't want to get involved with lamb slaughter.

"It seemed more complicated, but in reality it was less complicated."

It could have gone in another direction altogether.

Hickson wasn't too bad a rugby player, and he played at senior club level in Wellington and Hawke's Bay, but he was more the type who would played to see where it led him rather than with a purposeful drive to become, say, an All Black.

There became a time when career, business and family were paramount, but he does rue the passing of the days when sport – such as the staff rugby team – was all part of the team building and bonding of people in the workplace.

When the 40 years was marked at a function a fortnight ago – delayed by the impacts of the global pandemic and thus missing some faces which might have come had it been without the uncertainty of travel that Covid-19 had brought – it was the big chance to celebrate the staff.

No VIPs, no dignitaries, and no long speeches.

Perhaps Hickson was partially filling a gap that the changing of times had brought, when he led a sponsorship trend with the Hawke's Bay Magpies, becoming the principal sponsor through a rural communities initiative known as The Magpies Club.

It's part of over 20 years of sponsorship for Hawke's Bay rugby, setting the sport on the
pathway to a secure premier level part in the game, and the return of the Ranfurly Shield to Hawke's Bay in 2013,

The latter revived Hickson's memories of the 1966-1969 era, when he went to almost every game, while fitting in the demands of a high school education, and some matches for the first fifteen.

In the intervening years, from about the time of the Whakatu closure and the loss of thousands of job opportunities in the region, the Magpies struggled.

The side was in and out of usually the second division until the mid-2000s, but the Magpies initiative would be seen as a big part in the survival and eventual progression to the point of attaining another shield era.

Hickson's also been an annual supporter of Napier's Art Deco Festival for more than 25 years, and over the years has attained his own recognition in such ways as winning the Allflex/Federated Farmers Agribusiness Person of the Year Award in 2012, and the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2016.

It seems nowhere near time to put the feet up, although he says continuing to be involved in the meat industry is continuing to be an optimist.

"I think the pastoral industry will continue to be under pressure, and livestock numbers will trend downwards," he says, but he doesn't see the sheep numbers dropping to zero, for there will always be the demand for the natural product, and the better cuts.

With the company's 41st anniversary looming on Tuesday, Hickson has succession plans to assure the future of the operation, but in the meantime says: "Like with nearly everything you have to have to be passionate. It gives you the motivation to get up in the morning".

What the punt over 40 years ago has achieved personally, is to create the freedom to get up and go to work each day when he wants, although some might ponder the irony.

"I sleep in," he says, but he's still at the desk by 7.30am most mornings.