Buyers view Maketu Pies as town waits
Residents fear impact on the coastal community if the plant has to close
Prospective buyers went through the doors of Maketu Pies yesterday, but one highprofile Tauranga pie maker has decided against putting in an offer.
Bay of Plenty company Maketu Pies went into receivership last week due to its “critical financial position”.
The business has been operating in Maketu¯ for about 36 years and is the community's biggest employer of about 40 staff, mostly locals. The shop on Little Waihi Rd is owned by husband and wife Grant and Karen Wilson.
A notice published in the Bay of Plenty Times said Thomas Rodewald and Kenneth Brown were appointed as joint receivers.
“The best option was to put [the company] into receivership to enable it to continue to trade. It is a bit early to say how it got to this point and to estimate what has caused the issue,” Thomas Rodewald told the Bay of Plenty Times.
Rodewald said there had been a “reasonable amount” of interest from people who had been through the business yesterday. “I am still hopeful for a sale next week,” he said.
Award-winning Tauranga baker and Patrick's Pies owner Patrick Lam said he had considered buying the bakery.
However, Lam, who has won the Bakels New Zealand Supreme Pie Award seven times, said he was advised not to because he specialised in retail business rather than wholesale.
“We have never done that wholesale business before, only retail,” he said. “We are completely different to them. We are just a small production.”
Lam said he knew Maketu Pies owner Grant Wilson well, having bumped into him at the Bakels NZ Supreme Pie Awards in Auckland each year.
“I feel really sorry for him,” he said. “It is so sad for this to happen to him.”
The Wilsons could not be contacted for comment.
The news the company was in receivership has rocked the Maketu¯ community.
Former employee Ronnie TapsellWalters worked at Maketu Pies for 13 years and said almost everyone living in Maketu¯ was, or knew someone, employed by the company.
“It has employed so much of Maketu¯ . For a lot of them that is their only income for the house.”
Tapsell-Walters, who used to run the oven room, said she felt for her former bosses who had given so much to the community.
“They are a community-wise wha¯nau. They have always been about employing locals. They back this community, they back Maketu¯ hard,” she said.
“It is heartbreaking because it is a community business . . . Generations have been employed there.”
The former employee said the community had been talking about buying shares in the company to help keep it afloat.
“If there was a way they could save it they would. They are good people.”
Maketu Health and Social Services whanau ora co-ordinators Corrine Paul and Moki Thomas said it was devastating news for the community.
“About 90 per cent of their employees are local. We feel for them and all of their workers,” Paul said.
Thomas, who worked as one of the cooks at Maketu Pies in 2011, said: “I feel their pain.”
Maketu¯ Community Board chairman Shane Beech said he was devastated to hear the news.
“Maketu Pies is iconic nationally and internationally. It has certainly put Maketu¯ on the map.”
Beech said the owners were “a lovely, well-respected” family in Maketu¯ and the business was the largest single employer of Maketu¯ residents.
Maketu Landing dairy manager Angrez Singh said the news was “totally unbelievable”. Singh said the shop next door to the business sold about 100 Maketu Pies per day and close to 200 a day during the summer.