Kōkiri

Te Kaha Gold is a partnership of 6 ahu whenua trusts on 80 hectares of land in Te Kaha.

The kiwifruit enterprise is bringing whānau home and creating a future for their uri.

Hoani Kerei – Overall Orchard Manager: I was born on the land right here. This used to be a dairy farm in my young days. This land was conquered in the old days by Te Whānau-a-Te-Ēhutu and my tipuna, Wharengaio got these two blocks here – 9B and 67.  And he had two sons, Te Ahiwaru who signed the Treaty of Waitangi for Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and his brother Te Mangokaitupua. That’s why we have two blocks side by side.

Haki McRoberts – Chairperson, Te Kaha Landowners Group (TKG): When we first started you know, a lot of people came in. We looked at it for about 10 years and we said something’s wrong here – they are the bosses, and we are the labourers.

Piripi Jennings – General Manager, Te Kaha Landowners Group (TKG): With Te Puni Kokiri the support we’ve received has largely been around development, and sort of design and implementation flows of different projects that we’ve had going. The first one was around our pilot nursery Te Heriko.

Haki McRoberts: We got our own managers from Te Whānau-ā-Apanui managing  all of our own orchards around here. We’ve got our own supervisors. We’ve got our own leading hands working in our orchards.

Te Ataarangi Parata - Nursery: It’s a big family, it’s a big whānau with the nursery, the orchards, the spray shed so we are just a whole family working together as one.

Haki McRoberts: The other good thing about it we get a lot of money from kiwifruit, but money’s not everything. We try to keep our people employed.

Royce Hou – Orchard Manager: Eleven years ago I brought my family back to Te Kaha. I started off in the kiwifruit as a worker and then as a supervisor, decided to go on the Bay of Plenty Polytech training to upskill myself. Being here and helping our people grow has actually provided an opportunity for my children to have something to come back to.

Ray Karauria – Orchard Manager: TKG have got that structure in place and are able to facilitate the whole thing going forward and really with that leadership the sky’s the limit with what TKG can achieve going forward.