On February 1 this year, Harraways chief executive Henry Hawkins was on his first day on the job, standing in an oat field.
"It was an oat growers day down in Gore. I’m sure they were looking at this guy from Auckland wondering what he was going to do or where he was from."
There had been talk of the novel coronavirus in China but it had not yet become something the new Harraways chief executive thought he had to deal with.
"Even at that point in time, as a New Zealander myself, I didn’t really think it was really going to affect us.
"I was just really focused about what the future would look like for the business, what it would look like for me."
Mr Hawkins had taken over from Stuart Hammer, who had been chief executive of the company for 20 years and was known for his support for growers, in particular by setting up the Oat Industry Group.
Within a month of that scene in the oat field, New Zealand would have its first confirmed case of Covid-19 and not long after the country went into the Alert Level 4 lockdown.
The increased demand and scenes of queues and security guards outside of supermarkets started to appear in Auckland.
Managing that demand was doable, Mr Hawkins said, but orders from the supermarkets across the country soon boomed.
Mr Hawkins thinks Harraways managed that situation fairly.
"It started with them [the supermarkets] saying to us ‘Look, we’re not sure where this is going, but just make as much as you can, because we think it’s going to get out of control’."
They went to a 24-hour operation, six and a-half days a week, for two months.
"It was obviously great for business.
"We were just pumping product out the whole time. We didn’t really keep up. We could have done more and we could have made more."
Production records were broken week after week during lockdown and the record for a single week’s production, at 285 metric tonnes of finished products, beat the previous record by 25%.
Sales were up by more than 70% above normal levels for the two months to about the end of June.
The majority of those sales were at supermarkets and other retail outlets, as many of Harraways’ commercial clients were not operating during the lockdown.
Harraways only needed a few more casuals to add to its roll of about 55 staff, who took on more hours to help churn the product out.
"They did it for themselves, but they also equally did it for the business," Mr Hawkins said.
"They knew that times were tough and if we succeeded it was obviously good for them as well."
Staff have since received end-of-year bonuses, Mr Hawkins said.
He said receiving the ODT’s 2020 Business of the Year award was a result of the hard work of Harraways staff, suppliers and growers.
Demand got so intense at times, Harraways was running out of packaging and raw material.
"It’s the first time that this business has ever seen our racking be full overnight and then in the morning it’s completely empty and then full overnight and then empty again.
"We were pretty much making it 24 hours but we were selling it all out the door."
The challenge was trying to catch up to a point where Harraways could build a reservoir of stock to rely on, something the company was not able to do until towards the end of winter.
The pressure on supplies — raw materials and packaging — was difficult when some of those products had to come in from overseas and "timelines just got blown out", Mr Hawkins said.
A crucial relationship for Harraways was with its oats growers.
The oats were already grown but the company needed to get them quicker when the pressure came on in the lockdown.
"They were still harvesting at that point, which is normal for them.
"But actually harvesting and ‘we need them’ is quite a different concept, so the throughput right through from the growers through to us through to customers, was enormous.
"Supply chain was key and for us it all starts with the growers."
The company has now entered its quiet period, when it can get maintenance done and get people away on holiday.
In September, the owners of Harraways directed the company to give 100,000 servings, or 5000kg, of oats to the Salvation Army’s foodbanks throughout the South Island.
Those oats are still being rolled out and those donations are expected to finish early next year.
"Then who knows what the country might look like then, and we’ll see what we can do for it again."
The oats manufacturer followed the donation by teaming up with another Dunedin born organisation, Whanau Awhina Plunket.
That involved promoting the organisation on Harraways products in supermarkets and putting oats sachets in the Plunket bags given to new mothers from March next year.
The future is bright for oats, Mr Hawkins said.
Oat milk in particular was an exciting prospect, he said.
"That’s a real developing market in New Zealand.
"It won’t be long before Kiwi-made oat milk is on the shelves here in New Zealand and then exported around the world, which will be a really cool story for this country, because oat milk is one of the flourishing plant foods and alternative milks in the world today."
Mr Hawkins is looking forward to seeing more oats-based products in the market.
"We’re not just talking about oat milk, which is the obvious one. Out to the yoghurt guys, peanut butter guys, chocolate customers ... oats have become very popular very quick.
"They are very trendy, very cool in the plant food space and everyone’s looking at a way to either use or infuse those into their products."
Harraways sells its products to Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and has some minor sales to China.
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Good product, good company, good choice for Otago Daily Times’ 2020 Business of the Year. Congratulations, Harraways.
Check the label, buy the NZ product folks!
Great to hear from a business that is positive, so many others once COVID came whinged loudly and failed to adapt and make new patterns and products --or put their hands out for $$ from government. And Harraways organic oats are perfect--I have stocked up on them well before the panic. Good on you.