Well-known tea and coffee people meet up for special visit to new Auckland facilities
SIXTEEN PEOPLE who have been involved in the tea industry in this country for, in some cases, over 40 years, were invited by the Bell Tea & Coffee Company last month to tour its new head office in Crooks Road on Auckland’s Highbrook Business Park.
At the same time they were invited to tour the company’s production facilities in nearby East Tamaki where the coffee-roasting equipment has been brought into a refurbished tea packing building.
The special visit brought together some well-known characters not only from the past of Bell Tea but also from the competing brands of Choysa, Bushells, Wilcocks and Dilmah.
From Bells past was Hugh Perrett, (chairman of the board of Bell Tea and managing director of both Foodstuffs (Auckland) and Foodstuffs New Zealand before Tony Carter.) Also John Mahoney, who will always be remembered for taking a flight to London and bringing back with him a contract for Bell to represent the British tea brand, Twinings in this country.
The earliest Bell employee to be there was Brian Kilby, who joined in 1967 as assistant sales manager.
He started in Dunedin because the Auckland factory was not operational until a month after he joined.
Another early employee was Wally Cochrane, who joined in 1973 as a sales rep covering south/east Auckland to Thames Valley and Tauranga. He was promoted to North Island sales manager in 1986 The reunion was the brainchild of David Burton, coffee taster at Bell Tea & Coffee Company, who started with Quality Packers (Choysa) in 1977 as a trainee tea taster at a time when packets of tea outsold tea bags.
Also there was his father, Jack, who was taught tea tasting by Peter Malcolm, of L.D.Nathan and sent to Sri Lanka where he worked for a year in Heath & Co.’s tea department. Returning to New Zealand he was employed by H.E.
Burton & Co, which supplied tea to the major tea packers.
And the third member of the Burton family to be present was John, who joined H E Burton & Co in 1980 to understudy Jack and Geoff Burton. The company was involved in importing tea, textiles, Sunmaid raisins and other smaller lines. He now represents Dilmah in New Zealand.
Career inspiration
Leigh Ashby, a Harrisons and Crosfield broker, says he came across Jack Burton when the latter spoke at his school ( St Kentigern School ) in 1971 about tea and tea-tasting. Also in the room was classmate David Burton.
On leaving school he joined Harrisons and Crosfield as a trainee and found that tea and coffee mostly held his interest as it does today.
Trevor Searle was also at the gathering. After initial training in London with J Lyons & Co, two years in Calcutta and eight in South Africa including work in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Kenya, he moved to this country having met Jack Burton and his father in Calcutta.
He was met on arriving in New Zealand by Ray McGregor, then MD of Foodstuffs, who encouraged him to join Bell. He was offered a job by Pat Moore at Quality Packers and, after three interviews, was accepted as tea buyer.
He went on to serve 30 years with Bell before retiring.
Another taster was Pat Moore who joined Harrisons and Crosfield London in 1947 after leaving the Army, training for three months with Twinings and the following year joined its Calcutta operations. He held a number of overseas positions in the tea industry before joining Bond & Bond in Auckland in 1965 when it was a leading importer and distributor.
The following year he became GM of its Tea Division and then director of Bond & Bond.
In 1971 he handled the merger of the tea interests of Bond & Bond and L D Nathan in the name of Quality Packers and, two years later, L D Nathan bought the rest of Bond & Bond. Between 1973 and 1985 he took over the management of Nathan’s coffee interests, frozen food manufacture, dry grocery packaging and distribution. He retired in 1985.
Another Quality Packers employee was Allan Barber, who became marketing manager in 1982, saying the main challenge then had been to find a balance between supplying Woolworths, then owned by L D Nathan, and Bell Tea Company owners Foodstuffs. The further south they went, the harder it became because Foodstuffs in the South Island and, to a lesser extent, Wellington, were strongly Bell and Tiger orientated.
“It was a constant struggle to maintain shelf facings and shelf price competitiveness.”
The other guest at the reunion was Mohammed Iqbal, who dealt with many members of the trade.
