Born and raised in Oamaru, Mr Thorp is the youngest of four. "I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I did love going out to my extended family’s dairy farm in Maheno at every chance."
Tragedy struck when he was 12, his mother dying of breast cancer.
With his older siblings getting on with their lives away from home, Mr Thorp moved to the dairy farm in Maheno.
"It was an amazing thing they did for me, taking me in when they had five young children of their own. They are great people and I have a strong bond with them all."
Spending his teenage years on the farm gave Mr Thorp a taste for farm work and, after finishing high school, he worked full time at the dairy farm, moving on to be a shepherd and a "very average" shearer. Moving back to Oamaru in the late 1980s, he got a job at Pukeuri meatworks at the north end of Oamaru.
"I started at the very bottom of the chain. My day consisted of cutting the large intestine off the gut and flushing the grass material from the intestine so it could be made into condoms. All sense of dignity goes out the door when you get a job like that," he said, laughing.
It was a foot in the door with a company that rewarded work ethic and ambition.
"It was an awesome company, good people and a great place to learn."
Over the course of 15-plus years Mr Thorp worked his way up the ladder and by 2000 he was the plant manager, which he did for four years while also starting a young family with his wife, Lee-Anne. The couple have two sons, Harry and Jack, now 24 and 22. Harry is in the police force, and Jack is a commercial pilot and flight instructor.
In the past 20 years, the Thorp family has made a couple of major moves around rural New Zealand, where Mr Thorp has taken up management positions leading food export companies.
"We moved to Gisborne from Oamaru, which quite honestly was so different in so many ways."
The family adapted and grew to love it.
"My advice for anyone who moves somewhere where they don’t know anyone: never turn down an invitation and get involved in the community.
"For us that was the kids’ school. We have made lifelong friends in each town we have lived in."
Mr Thorp credits his wife for being supportive of his work life and sometimes putting family second.
"Lee-Anne’s been amazing. She’s tolerated a lot of my stress. I would pull out of family holidays 24 hours before we were about to leave and she would take the boys and go anyway," he said.
Mrs Thorp has had a long career in retail banking, recently finishing to help out at BX Foods in a part-time admin role.
CEO of Lean Meats in Hawke’s Bay in 2014, Mr Thorp found himself back in Oamaru at the Lean Meats plant after a financial restructuring of the company by China-based Binxi Group. The company changed its name to BX Foods and he has led the 250-strong team through a multimillion-dollar redevelopment of the plant.
"A lot of the project was done in house. Sometimes it felt like an $80 million redevelopment. It was quite stressful at times," he said, laughing.
He led a meat processing company which was smaller than other players in the industry but small enough to "run it like you own it," and still big enough to still bring plenty of challenges. Knowing the farmer suppliers "by name, not by number", he enjoyed the personal relationships he had with farmers and doing the circuit around the A&P shows in the region.
"We like having a beer and a bite to eat with anyone who turns up at the BX site, not just those that supply to us.
"I am really looking forward to seeing our BX Foods company grow."
By Alice Scott
