03/09/2026
GC Group 60th Celebration. Thank You from John and Malcolm
Sixty years ago this business started with a truck, a patch of Taranaki, and two people who believed they could make something of it. Everything since has been built on that same footing. Fair dealing. Long relationships. A willingness to back yourself when the timing looks terrible. There have been acquisitions, near-misses, the ideas that worked and the ones that didn't, and above all the people who carried it.
Thank you for being part of it.
Loyalty and partnership
Some relationships have outlasted entire industries. The same banks. The same lawyers. The same insurers. Farmers whose fathers and grandfathers we spread for. Sixty years of business teaches you something simple: the people who back you when the numbers look down are the people you keep. Deals get done on trust long before they get done on paper. To every partner and every customer who has stayed the distance — thank you. You are the reason there's a 60th to celebrate.
Building through changing times
Sixty years covers a lot of weather. Political upheaval. Policy that changed the rules on farming overnight. Booms that didn't last and downturns that did. Every decade brought its own version of uncertainty. We grew through all of it - often at the moments the forecasts said hold still. Not because we had it figured out. Because we backed the industry, and we backed our people to work through whatever the times threw at them.
Opportunity at every crossroad
Every fork in the road was a decision to look forward.
Good years, hard years — the response was the same. Ask what's possible now that wasn't possible last year. That's how a spreading business ended up in quarrying, in fertiliser distribution, in property. Not a grand plan. A habit. When the ground shifted, we went looking rather than waiting. Faith, grit, and a fair bit of nerve. Sixty years on, that habit is still the most valuable thing this business owns.
Perseverance on the road
There were years we lived on the road. Up and down the country, town by town, farm by farm, because the work wasn't going to walk in the door on its own. Long drives. Cold starts. Plenty of nights away from home. That's the part of a 60-year story nobody photographs. But it's the part that made the rest possible.
Diversification, wins and losses
Not everything we tried worked. Some ventures grew into businesses we're proud of today. Others didn't make it, and we shut them down and learned. Quarrying. Fertiliser distribution. Property. Mechanical services. Everyone started as somebody asking "what if?" during either a very good year or a very bad one. We've never pretended every call was the right one. What we've done is stay honest about it, take the lesson, and keep looking for the next opportunity.
Integrity and standards
Built from the ground up. Done properly. No shortcuts on quality. No shortcuts on the way we treat people. National certifications earned rather than claimed; because a brand is only worth what it does when nobody's checking. Being fair may cost you money in the short term but it buys you sixty years.
The people
Sixty years of people who stayed. Drivers. Operators. Mechanics. Office teams. Families who've had 30+ years through the gates. People who worked through the lean years because they believed in where it was heading. The businesses changed shape a dozen times. The values didn't, and neither did the loyalty of the people who carried them. Today is no different. We're proud of the brands we represent, and prouder of the team behind them.
Fleet, change and safety
We've tried just about every fleet configuration there is.
Sixty years of working out what actually performs on New Zealand country; what's economic, what's reliable, what suits the job in front of it. But the single biggest change to this business wasn't a truck or a spreader. It was health and safety. Getting serious about how our people go home each night didn't slow us down. It made us better operators, better employers, and a better business to deal with. Thank you to every business, employee and community group we have been proud of being part of.
60 Year Milestone
Sixty years is a milestone, not a finish line. The next sixty belong to the team standing here today, and we couldn't be prouder to hand it to them.
