Campaigner Jim O’Malley, a Dunedin city councillor, told a public meeting in Dunedin yesterday campaigners planned to seek $2 million in crowd-sourced funding in October to help reorganise the company and greatly expand its production.
Dr O’Malley said that given $5.8 million had earlier been swiftly pledged to support Buy the Factory efforts, he was confident the $2 million required could be raised within a matter of hours through the PledgeMe crowd-funding site.
The new company would manufacture high-quality artisan chocolate, starting with about 1 million bars a year.
The company would begin conservatively with about 20 staff and he hoped this would grow to at least 100 or more within 10 years.
More than 50 people attended yesterday’s meeting, at Age Concern Otago in the Octagon. .
Dr O’Malley was accompanied at the talk by fellow councillors Rachel Elder and Marie Laufiso, and Ocho founder Liz Rowe also spoke.
After the meeting, Dr O’Malley said he was "really happy" with how it went.
The meeting had aimed to show people that "we haven’t just gone missing for six weeks", and that constructive work had been done to make an expanded company "realistic".
Within the next few months it was planned to assume the Ocho name and bring Ocho into the new, expanded company, after a third party valuation.And a chief executive officer would be appointed.
Moves to establish Dunedin Manufacturing Holdings (DMH) as an incorporated society were under way, and DMH would appoint the board, which was likely to be five-strong, including an employee representative. The board would then appoint the company’s chief executive in August-September.
A campaign to buy the Dunedin Cadbury factory was initiated earlier in the year by Dr O’Malley, after parent company Mondelez announced plans to close it early next year.
Dr O’Malley said last month his campaign had switched to setting up a company to make quality craft chocolate, and he had been working with the Otago Chocolate Company.
