Headstrong meat industry innovator led from the heart
Graeme Eric Selby Lowe, meat industry leader and philanthropist; b Newcastleupon-Tyne, September 10, 1934; m Jenny Allen, 1s, 2d; d Havelock North, July 15, 2012, aged 77.
GRAEME LOWE was built like Goliath but played the role of David. The two-metre tall dashing, but down-to-earth, Englishman made an indelible impression on New Zealand.
In the history books he is the man who revolutionised this country’s meat industry. To family, friends and colleagues he was the self-made man, single-minded and headstrong, but led by his heart.
Graeme Eric Selby Lowe was born in Newcastle, England, to New Zealand mother Joan and English businessman Eric, who died when Graeme was just 11. The young Graeme, one of three boys, developed a love of the sea and would spend full days on fishing boats from the age of five or six. He was sporty and not particularly interested in school, with one early headmaster reporting to his parents ‘‘I sometimes feel he has resigned himself to failure’’. It would not be the last time someone underestimated Mr Lowe.
His academic performance improved in time, but it was never his calling. He excelled at rugby and at 21 became the youngest captain of the Hull and East Riding rugby team.
In 1957 he answered an advertisement calling for crew on a 70-foot boat sailing to New Zealand via the Caribbean. He wanted to be nearer his mother and her new husband, Dr Peter McKinlay, who had moved to Levin, but wanted an adventure rather than a passage on a liner.
The Summer Rose was a small boat for a trip across the globe and its voyage was the subject of news stories in Britain and New Zealand. The boat’s owner, Leo Oxley, turned out to be a pompous and dishonest fool and the eight-strong crew jumped ship in Jamaica. Mr Lowe and another man were the only two to make it to New Zealand.
There is an early photo of Mr Lowe on the boat, standing with arms crossed beneath the boom, towering over his shipmates. He has the unmistakable bearing and profile of a leader.
It was a trait he kept throughout his life, said his son, Andy, and never more so than in his final two decades when afflicted by Parkinson’s Disease.
‘‘I think what drove him was a love of people. He didn’t care about status, race, religion, age, what school you went to . . . People related to that and it meant they were willing to follow him.
‘‘The thing that inspires me is that in health anyone can be heroic and brave and a mentor and live by their principles. It’s in sickness that you see real strength. Here’s a man who was once in control of so much but now struggled to lift a glass of water to his mouth, yet he never complained.’’
Shortly after landing in New Zealand, Mr Lowe found work as an assistant production manager at Birdseye Foods Ltd’s Christchurch plant.
His zest for innovation and his penchant for lateral thinking became a hallmark of his time with the company, but not always with the best results.
In a misplaced bid to improve the yield of chickens going through a mincer he once instructed stuff to crank it up to maxi- mum speed and put whole carcasses through, bones and all.
Yield improved dramatically, but he was soon confronted by an apoplectic factory boss demanding answers. Mr Lowe was barred from the factory, given the keys of a Morris Minor and dispatched to become a travelling buyer of meat, fish and poultry.
His charm and sense of humour meant it was a job in which he excelled, and later led to his being moved to Hawke’s Bay, where he became company buyer for Unilever (Birdseye’s owner).
Meanwhile he had fallen in love with Wellingtonian Jenny Allen, who he married in 1960.
Bfriends Y 1964, at the age of 29, Mr Lowe began looking for other opportunities. He borrowed a deposit from his father-in-law and roped in a few to buy a wholesale and retail butcher’s plant in Hastings called Dawn Meats. The vendor, Cedric Jones, reckoned Mr Lowe would go bust and he would be able to buy the business back for a bargain in six months.
Mr Lowe put his head down. He started at 4am working alongside the butchers and usually worked into the night. It was he who drove the company’s Commer van to the Tomoana meatworks to collect the livestock, loading as many as he could onto the van, often tying some to the roof.
He was a dynamic new force in an industry accustomed to a staid and unquestioning regularity. The established ‘‘old boys’’ did not take kindly to this upstart.
Soon, Mr Lowe saw the future was in exporting. But the late 60s were the days of heavy regulation. He had inherited a couple of packhouse licences from Dawn Meats that allowed him to pack a limited number of cattle. But only exportlicensed slaughter and processing plants could kill the stock for export. Until he had one of these he would always be at the mercy of the big boys and the Meat Board, which ruled who could have licences.
What followed was a lengthy battle that saw Mr Lowe take on the establishment and finally win the right to conduct business free of stifling regulation. Along the way Mr Lowe, frustrated at constraints forced on him by Hawke’s Bay meat companies, bought an old meatworks in Hawera, T H Walker and Sons, that held a slaughter licence. The plant was upgraded and put into full throttle.
By the mid 1980s Dawn Meats was exporting about 2200 tonnes of chilled beef a year. It had been granted a licence to slaughter in Hawke’s Bay as long as it combined with competitor Richmonds. They formed Pacific Meats and in November 1981, Pacific’s Oringi plant near Dannevirke was opened by Prime Minister Rob Muldoon.
A combination of economic factors, an end of subsidies and a drop in livestock numbers in the late 80s resulted in Mr Lowe making the reluctant decision to sell out of Dawn Meats and Pacific. He started a new venture, Lowe Walker, and added further plants in Te Aroha, Dargaville, Waitotara and Hastings. Between 1988 and 1991 the company’s turnover rose from $35 million to $225m.
In 1998 Mr Lowe sold the plants to Richmond for $27m and formed Lowe Corporation, which specialised in by-products, with rendering and tannery plants in Hawera, Hastings, Te Aroha, Auckland, Tuakau and Christchurch. Now in the hands of Andy Lowe, it is New Zealand’s largest privately owned independent hide, skin, protein recycling, processing and exporting company and also has interests in other agri-business companies and property.
Philanthropy was a large part of Mr Lowe’s life. He sponsored the Hawke’s Bay rescue helicopter for the past 20 years, the Hawke’s Bay rugby union for more than 40 years and gave millions of dollars to local art and culture, civic facilities, sport, health, education, conservation and youth development.
He also started the Graeme Lowe Foundation, which supported education and medical equipment and research.
In 1989 he received the Queen’s Service Medal and in 2003 he was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Sources: Andy Lowe, Margaret Baker, Craig Ellis’ book