The seeds of success
When lockdown began John McCullough sent most of his staff home on full pay. A week later he was on the phone begging them to come back.
McCullough owns Egmont Seeds in New Plymouth, the only factory of its kind in New Zealand.
He supplies all the seeds you find in Bunnings, Mitre 10, The Warehouse, supermarkets, gardens centres, and nurseries and business has never been better.
When Covid-19 hit and demand for gardening supplies skyrocketed, not only did McCullough need his staff back, he had to turn the website off to stop orders coming through.
‘‘We were just running out of stuff flat tack, we tried to run it with the just wha¯ nau but I was getting here at 4am and going home at 10pm.
‘‘I think it’s made a lot of people that have had job losses or pay cuts look to the garden.’’
It’s seen Egmont Seeds’ income more than double in April this year compared to last year. Luckily for McCullough, he had the supply, and the machinery, to keep up with demand. Just before lockdown they had received a massive resupply of seeds – enough to usually last them at least two years.
‘‘It’s cheaper and easier to bring in two to three years worth of seeds at a time.
‘‘We had all this extra seed and extra packets and then, bugger me, Covid comes along and says ‘Egmont, can you supply New Zealand all this extra seed?’ – it wasn’t because of Covid we did it, but lucky we had it.’’
McCullough has been in the seed game for 48 years and has watched the industry completely change with much of what used to be done by hand, now done by machine.
One of many machines in his Taranaki factory is able to produce 6.6 seed packets a second.
‘‘We were just running out of stuff flat tack.’’
John McCullough
Egmont Seeds owner
It cost more than $800,000 and is one of only three in the world – the other two are in Russia.
McCullough says the seed availability has also greatly improved in the last 48 years. However, MPI rules have made it a lot harder to get them in.
They’d spent $196,000 on MPI tests in the last year when they used to spend $56,000.
‘‘When it comes to seed diseases, New Zealand has hardly any compared to India or China.
He used to think MPI putting those barriers up was a pain ‘‘but they saw the problems overseas and put up the barriers and it costs a lot of money but what they’ve done is a really good job.’’
Because of MPI’s barriers and New Zealand having basically no seed diseases, McCullough says growers here are getting huge orders from offshore.
‘‘For example 40 per cent of the world’s carrots come from New Zealand seeds.’’
Where it can, the firm gets the seeds from New Zealand but a lot come from overseas.
Covid-19 has affected this in the form of delays due to limited air space and substantially higher costs. ‘‘We bought in 400kg of wildflower seed the other week and it cost $14,000, it usually costs $4000.’’
McCullough got in to the seed business at just 15 when he found out you got a day off school to get work experience.
He found a job at Watkins Seeds in Bell Block and didn’t leave until he was 39.
‘‘When I started this business there were seven seed companies like us selling flower seeds and packet seeds and now we’re the only one.
‘‘Every colour packet out there like Yates, McGregor’s, Mr Fothergill’s, Oderings, Kiwi Garden all go through our factory but each brand give specific, technical requirements for their seeds.’’
McCullough says that kind of monopoly of the market comes with responsibility, and they don’t abuse it.
The position they’ve got themselves into sees them with $7,000,000 turnover a year.
They also sell seeds online and supply seeds to Wattie’s for beans, seeds to carrot growers in Ohakune, and tomato seeds to growers who produce purely for McDonald’s.
Surprisingly, McCullough says he doesn’t have an extravagant vegetable garden himself because the growing season collides with their busiest time of year. However, he’s passionate about people having their own garden because it’s a financial advantage and it’s convenient.
For $3 you can get a packet of 75 broccoli seeds, McCullough says, about what you’d spend on one or two heads of broccoli.
‘‘Things like broccoli, radish, carrots they’re not difficult to grow, it’s a convenience thing like fish and chips,’’ he says. ‘‘Wait till spring though. It’s too late in the season now but it’s amazingly easy and you don’t need a big area.’’