Taylor Corporation

Hawke’s Bay apple growers, packers and exporters Taylor Corporation export a million cartons of apples and can’t grow enough fruit to meet demand.

Taylor Corporation is a family owned and operated apple growing, packing and exporting company in Hawke’s Bay. Kelvin and Lynette Taylor started the business in 1995 from its parent company Golden Del Orchards.

Kelvin has been growing apples all his life, and his parents and his grandparents were growers. He bought his first block of land when he was 18. He had saved up enough money for a brand new car and instead of doing that he bought land in Franklin Road.

Kelvin and Lynette have three children. Claire, Natalie and Cameron and their partners are all involved in the business. They are fourth generation growers. Cameron has a seven year old son who just wants to come to work with his Dad all the time. Cameron says when he was growing up there was a cot in the packhouse.

“We believe we have the number one brand of NZ apples into Asia. We achieve a few more dollars a box than anyone else. We are proud our name is on the box. We don’t change our brand, we keep it the same. Our Taylor brand is a premium brand.”

“We’ve just put a big new pre-sorting plant and waxing line in at our packhouse. We don’t use any petroleum waxes, we shine our fruit naturally.   We try and present our box of apples like a box of chocolates, and this presentation makes you want to buy the fruit. We were the first to put a red liner inside the fruit, which brings up the colour on the fruit. We strive to grow the best and we are always looking for something different, such as working with Oritain to certify our fruit. We were the first apple growers in the world to do this. We are very careful about minimising residues on our fruit. Only one mistake is needed to lose business and reputation.”

The Taylor operation is simple, with only export and juice apples produced. About 90% of the throughput is their own fruit. They have previously packed fruit for other growers.

The national export crop is about 14 million cartons, of which the Taylors export 1million cartons.

Their juice apples are processed by Profruit in Hastings.

Their objective is to add value to their export apples, which go to markets in China, throughout Asia and a lesser amount into Europe. They see Europe as a commodity market, but are able to target niche markets in Asia. Europe takes the tarter apples, while the Asian markets prefer sweeter apples, which the Taylors grow more of. They produce a lot of gift packs of apples for the Asian market.

Because they are a small, family owned business, they are able to talk directly to their customers and make decisions straight away, without waiting on board meetings. This means they are much more flexible in responding to customers.

Taylor Corporation do all their own marketing and prefer at all times to deal with family businesses like their own, rather than with supermarkets.  Cameron explains that they know the children of the buyers they deal with. “It is just like another family. We try and encourage them to visit our family and operation in New Zealand. Knowing our family helps form positive and trusting relationships with them.”

This focus is paying off, because they can’t supply enough apples to meet demand. They would like to expand their orchard area each year but finding land of 40 to 80ha with water is proving difficult.

They also have their own nursery, growing their own rootstocks and producing 50,000 to 80,000 trees a year.

Their production is mainly of Pacific Queen, Royal Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji and Pacific Rose.

The family has employed a Mandarin-speaking nanny to teach the grandchildren Mandarin. Cameron was the driver behind this move. “Because I do the sales and travel I saw the importance of my children, who are now seven and five, learning Mandarin.

Taylor Corp tries to be one step ahead in all aspects of its business, and the Taylors are always looking to make improvements for the future. Currently buyers are able to log into a live camera stream of the packhouse in operation. This enables them to see their fruit being sorted and packed from anywhere in the world, connecting them to the produce they are purchasing and giving them a close-up live view – effectively making the world smaller.

This has been a huge success and they are taking the technology a step further in future into the orchard with a live feed camera of the apples growing all year round. At present they take time lapse images with video, starting with the bud to harvest, and these images are being recorded for the website. The packhouse also uses high tech gear to photograph fruit. Each apple is photographed around 40 times to make sure it reaches the export standard, otherwise it is drafted into the juice bins.

Taylor Corp employs 300 people in the peak season, 150 of whom are RSE workers from Tonga, Tuvalu and Thailand. They have found it difficult to employ enough local people, so recently they went to the local high school, Taradale High, to employ students for weekend and holiday work. About 20 students took up their offer of work.

The orchard business requires a whole range of people from engineers to builders to IT specialists, as well as pickers and packers. “We have three mechanics and our own IT staff.” They also do their own foreign currency work, branding and marketing. “We are interested in everything.”

The company used to “stay under the radar” but now they sponsor sports events and have a higher profile in the industry and local district. “We have learnt that we have to convince the parents of students that fruit growing is a great industry, and that people can move up the ladder.”

“There is nothing you can’t do in fruit growing.”

Counterfeiting and mislabelling of products is a serious concern in many key pipfruit markets, so Taylor Corp employed Oritain to prove that their apples are authentic. A few years ago tests showed the presence of a banned chemical DPA on a line of Taylor Corp organic apples. It was established that the apples had suffered accidental cross-contamination from high residue apples being repacked in a European pack house. The costs and potential damage to the brand reputation could have been immense. This showed Kelvin the need to independently and forensically prove the integrity of his product, what was from his property and what was not.

Oritain holds soil, water and fruit profiles from each of the orchards that supply Taylor Corp, all collated to produce a unique Taylor Corp fingerprint that cannot be replicated in any way.

“We wanted to see just how good Oritain was, so we supplied them with three different apple samples and asked the scientists to identify which of our orchards the samples came from.”

“They got two right but were very concerned that they couldn’t identify the third orchard. That was exactly what we wanted to hear because we hadn’t told them when we gave them the fruit that the third sample wasn’t ours at all. It came from Cambridge.”

Taylor Corp were the first apple producers in the world to scientifically fingerprint their product. This data has given them the opportunity to exonerate themselves if the need arises.

“Oritain run a great company providing us with assurance no one else in the world can offer. With them we enjoy and promote a unique point of difference. We can play the Hawke’s Bay New Zealand origin authentic card.”