- Why Seales?
- Our People
- History
HistorySeales Ltd is a livestock feed compounding business distributing both directly and in retail stores to farmers in the South Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Tarankai Regions. The business is based in Morrsinville in the Central Waikato Region. There are just under two million dairy cows within 160km of the feedmill.Seales was established in Morrinsville in 1968 by Rae and Bev Seales. In 1997 Seales was purchased by its current owners with the intention of processing and adding value to the 35,000 tonnes per annum of sweetcorn waste produced by Heinz Wattie in Gisborne. However, within 3 months major changes by Heinz worldwide and the sale and closure of the Gisborne’s facilities, resulted in a loss of this business opportunity. Over the following three years Seales diversified into growing maize and onions on leased land. In 1999/2000 the Company was caught by a dramatic collapse of global onion prices resulting in losses exceeding $1.5 million and was on the verge of receivership. After identifying a niche market for custom blended pelleted feed to the dairy sector the business was restructured by selling off non core assets and refocusing the business. The outcome of the new business model resulted in sustained sales growth, averaging 35% per annum from 2000 to 2005. From this solid foundation, exponential sales growth has occurred since, with sales increasing 260% and EBITDA increasing by 541% over the past three years. In September 2007 Seales commissioned a new feed mill in Morrinsville with a capital value of over $16 million. This provided a four-fold lift in capacity and includes the very latest state of the art technology out of Europe and Canada. In 2009 Seales invested a further $1.6 million in a third feed line that will grow capacity by 30%, as well as employing four new senior positions to accomodate the continued growth of the company. |
Seales before the new
The multi-level feed mill commissioned in September 2007 |
