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As a young man, Tony Gibbs craved adventure. He went to sea, but ended up making waves as one of NZ’s most respected corporate chiefs. Now retired to his beloved mandarin orchard in Matakana, he talks to Karyn Scherer about business, billiard tables, and keeping busy.
I’ve been very fortunate in my life, and I’ve always worked hard. I’ve never stopped working since I was a small boy. We never did sports — Dad wasn’t into rugby or anything. He was a deeply religious man and a spiritualist minister. Life was quite difficult for my parents. They came out from England in 1954 and it cost them everything they had. They weren’t 10-pound immigrants — they were very proud of paying their own way.
The day I turned 15 I left school and I couldn’t wait. I got a job on a meat boat as a galley boy and worked my way to London. Working on boats took me all over the place. I saw all of Europe, Scandinavia; hitchhiked all through the Middle East. I ran a car into Tehran with a Persian man, got caught and ended up paying duty. I worked in Israel, lived in Istanbul for a while — all those sorts of places.
After six years travelling I got a job in London as a management trainee in the Army & Navy Stores. One day I was meeting a supervisor I was dating, and she said; “I’ve brought a friend along”. Val stuck out her hand and I shook it, and I immediately knew I’d marry her. I did, six months later — that was 44 years ago.
When we married we had very little, but we worked hard and put money in the bank as fast as we could. It wasn’t easy but we never gave up. We came back to NZ as we wanted our children brought up here. I started a small business distributing and selling billiard tables, and it became the biggest supplier in the country of home-style pool tables. I sold the business when I was 30 and for the first time ever we had some real money. I think that’s what got me going — starting my first wee business. That was when all of a sudden you realise you can do things, and there’s that sheer determination to get ahead. I got involved in property speculation, and by pure accident I ended up working for Brierley Investments.
I’ve never been interviewed for any significant job in my life — they just happen. I never thought I’d end up in the corporate world, but I ended up there for 30 years. At one stage, I was on 10 boards. Over the years I’ve had all sorts of academics say I’ve been very lucky to have done so well without an education, to which my retort is: “Well, I think I have had a great education but mine was learned in the world, not at school.” You soon learn a lot about life and politics on the deck of a ship.
Years later, once the kids were grown up, we decided to buy some land, and I found the land where the orchard is now. It was 60 acres then. I’d read about mandarins starting in NZ and I decided to build a small mandarin orchard. It’s now a large orchard. It’s 140 acres, and there are 55,000 trees. It is all about our dreams. These days the mandarin market is oversupplied, which means prices are low. If you’re going to survive, you have to be big, so we’ll pick about 1000 to 1200 tonnes this year under our Ezypeel brand. We’ll have 70 workers at the height of picking.
The orchard is our home and a private place but once a year we open it to the public for the Matakana Fruitloop. About 1000 people came through this year and we enjoy supporting the local community. I’d like my grandchildren to be married here and I hope my family will keep the orchard going for the future. I think it’s nice for this area to keep as many of these horticultural businesses as possible; it’s why we all want to live here. To the credit of people of Matakana, there are lots of boutique vineyards making lots of interesting wine, and other boutique projects happening. When the Matakana shops arrived it was a bit of a shock. I was so used to the village as a sleepy hollow and all of a sudden, boom, there’s a cinema. There’ll be traffic lights next. Everyone loves the market, including us. However, I can’t get my mail on a Saturday anymore, which is irritating, but it’s all for the better.
In business I never was afraid to speak up or take on unpopular causes. While I agree with free trade, I’ve strongly opposed the monopoly Zespri has on kiwifruit exports. A country which is a great free trade model, although I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, is Chile. It’s an enormous horticultural country. We have so much fallow land in this country that we could turn into horticulture. I think my greatest achievement in my corporate career was getting rid of a silly tax bill proposed by the Labour government. They wanted to put a tax on dividends that people hadn’t got and most likely would never have. We took the Government on and won. I put ads in every paper in NZ and the press got behind it, which was neat. Labour withdrew the tax bill and NBR awarded me Business Leader of the Year. Two years after that Helen Clark gave me a Companion of the Order of NZ for services to business, which was very gracious of her.
I get on with most politicians. I ended up in the headlines recently for giving some money to David Cunliffe. But I’ve also given money to Act and National. I get concerned when principles seem to fly out the window and popularity becomes the major goal. I’ve travelled a lot in my life and I’ve seen some terrible regimes where politics is corrupt and the people are stuffed. One of things we’ve got to be proud of in NZ is our democratic voting system. Politicians in this country rely on donations, and we need to support the political process and make sure it stays that way.
What keeps me busy now is the orchard, and I’m also the president of the Howard League for Penal Reform. We have about 350 schoolteachers who are retired and who willingly go into jails throughout NZ, where we’re teaching prisoners to read and write. I’ve been looking at other things in horticulture, but there’s enough to do at the orchard right now. I certainly don’t run out of things to do, although one day I might build an observatory. We built a chapel on the orchard — it’s similar to a Selwyn Chapel — with the help of Warkworth draughtswoman Kerry Woodward, and it was a terrific project.
You can do almost anything you want to in life if you put your mind to it. You’ve just got to passionately want to do it and be prepared to pay the price. If you want it, go and get it, but there’s a price for everything.
