And there’s much more.
Products on the Fieldays site will include the firm’s recent auto cattle drafter and an electronic drench gun.
“Our focus from 1998 (the year Blampied bought the business) was on cattle handling equipment as I have found farmers everywhere want quicker, more efficient and safe systems,” he says.
Blampied’s sons work in the business: Nick in design and production and Patrick in technical development.
After five years in Auckland they moved the firm to Oamaru because “it suited the company with some 50% of sales being in the South Island and costs were reduced in the process.”
In 2004 the company bought the Donald’s Woolpress manufacturing business and four years ago (2011) they bought Racewell, which made sheep drafting and handling systems.
Since 2002 the head office and factory, now with 60 staff, has enjoyed uninterrupted sea views looking east onto the Oamaru foreshore.
Later this year they will move to a new, purpose built factory, retail showroom and offices in Oamaru’s new business park at the northern gateway on SH1.
The firm exports to Japan, US, Australia, Europe and even the Falkland Islands.
One early client, Ian Cummings of Waiouru, bought a cattle crush then phoned back to say it “wasn’t strong enough,” Nick Blampied says. Te Pari collected it, re-engineered it and delivered it back to Cummings’ “wild central North Island bulls”.
Now the ‘Cummings’ standard is the Te Pari standard and he has bought three more crushes, “all still working well”.
“We build them too strong,” quips Nick.
Another early customer from Northland, a Simmental cattle breeder, needed his crush 500mm longer to allow for vets and others to work in safety inside at the back of the unit. This modification has also become a standard right up to today.
Blampied says their products have won health and safety awards.
Sue Satterthwaite, who with her husband Mike farms at Rotherham, says “Before the Te Pari yards we never allowed the kids into the yard when we were working with cattle. Now I’m OK for them to help Mike. I get into them myself and feel quite happy and safe.”
It all started with docking irons
Ted French, on a farm in Beaconsfield Valley, north of Feilding, started the company in 1980, its first product a scissor action docking iron he designed and built.
Ted was joined by his son Peter in the fledgling company and their docking iron went on to win accolades – the NZ Agricultural Fieldays Invention Award in 1980 and an Equipment Award in 1981.
The company won six other Fieldays award and one Australian National Fieldays award over the next decade.
During the next 17 years Te Pari’s range expanded in animal husbandry and handling products, including a head bail designed by French.
Eventually the business drew the attention of Doug Blampied, then service manager of a national rural company. The French family in 1997 sold the business to Blampied, who moved it to Auckland.
www.tepari.com
