The First Fifty Years Watties - Hardcover with dust jacket, 222 pages - Author : Conly, Geoff - Publisher: J.Wattie Canneries Ltd, Hastings New Zealand - Publication Date: 1984 - Book is clean and tight. Dust jacket has a tear and odd marks. The First Fifty Years Watties - Introduction - Hawke's Bay is the most important horticultural district in New Zealand, measured by production a hectare. It is also the largest fruit-growing district in the country. More apples, pears and peaches are grown in the province than anywhere else in New Zealand, while an intensive vegetable cropping programme annually supplies the country's largest food processing factory, in Hastings. - Yet the food processing industry in its canning form came relatively late to Hawke's Bay, and then almost by accident, through an opportunity created by waste. The waste lay in fruit rotting on the ground in Heretaunga Plains' orchards, peaches and plums in particular. Freight charges getting this fruit to market too often outran the prices fetched, and this when people were hungry during the depression years of the early 1930s. Soup kitchens were operating in Hastings and elsewhere in urban areas throughout New Zealand, but fruit was rotting in Hawke's Bay. So when a 32-year-old business executive, in Hastings, James Wattie, confirmed that an Auckland jam manufacturer was importing fruit pulp from Tasmania, and would entertain a proposition to buy such pulp from Hawke's Bay instead, he grasped opportunity, canvassed for capital and went into business in a four-roomed cottage in King Street, Hastings, under the name J. Wattie Canneries Ltd. That was in September 1934. - Of previous fruit pulping and canning operations in Hawke's Bay, only one had flourished and it, in time, had failed. James Wattie shared his confidence with two fellow directors and 28 other original shareholders in the company, which was established with a paid capital of $2500. The sum is not so impressive in these inflated times but when New Zealand had still not emerged from the depression it took much confidence (and more goodwill) to invest in an industry yet to prove itself in Hawke's Bay. - The company prospered. Sales and sundry income of $7917 and a net profit of $1785 at the end of the first 10 months of operation grew to more than a million dollars and a net profit of $60,102 a decade later, and to almost $2.5 million and $76,304 in 1955. By then a branch factory had been established at Gisborne, to be followed in time by factories at Hornby (near Christchurch), Timaru and Feilding and the first mergers which led eventually to the formation of Wattie Industries Ltd., an industrial giant with a capital of $57.6 million, sales and earnings of $574 million and shareholders' funds of $245 million. The original 28 shareholders have grown to more than 20,000 ordinary and preference shareholders and Wattie Canneries' products are sold around the world, sometimes in the most unexpected markets. - One man's vision! Sir James Wattie never stopped nurturing the company he led, just as he never lost the common touch. He knew the staff of the Hastings' factory mostly by first names and he could do most of the jobs there as well as they, having learnt, as they say, the hard way. His vision built an industry and transformed the economies, in particular, of the Heretaunga Plains and the Poverty Bay flats. He overtook and stayed ahead of his competitors in the food processing industry, to come to dominate the scene. And for relaxation he raced horses, one good enough to win that classic southern hemisphere double, the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups. - If this book is primarily the story of J. Wattie Canneries Ltd., it is also very much the story of Sir James Wattie and his contributions to the economy of New Zealand. J. Wattie Canneries Ltd. is his personal, enduring monument.