![]() “Fortunately for the business, we had a second lockdown which made a massive difference for us and the company,” Angus says. Since then, the business has grown naturally and they only began actively marketing their Wonky boxes recently. ![]() An important value was to pay growers a fair price for their produce, and they were able to buy a range of vegetables and fruit that they boxed and sold online through their website. They returned to Wellington and went door knocking at farms in the Horowhenua to ask growers if they had surplus or cosmetically-challenged produce they could not sell. “Here, produce wasn’t leaving the farm and we were spending fortunes in the supermarket.” “It hit home – how costly things are in the supermarket, especially returning from the UK where grocery products are cheaper,” Angus says. The couple worked in horticulture last summer and realised growers were facing enormous challenges with labour, Covid and moving produce. With the business off to such a successful start, Katie and Angus are looking to establish a packing and distribution centre in Auckland to deliver as far as Hamilton and Tauranga, with plans to expand the business around the country and reduce even more waste.Īngus, Wellington born and bred, spent a “hell of a lot of time” in the United Kingdom and returned to New Zealand in the middle of Covid-19 with his partner, Katie, to show her his home country during a working holiday. Approximately 25 growers in the Kapiti and Horowhenua region now supply produce to Wonky Box, which is then packed and delivered weekly to some 1200 customers around Wellington. The number of growers involved in the scheme has expanded since its inception. Turning this waste into a business became an obsession for the couple after they realised just how much food wasn’t even getting to market. Before Covid-19, it was estimated that up to 30 percent wasn’t harvested and that has risen to 40 percent due to the post-Covid climate, lack of labour, poor prices or no market for the imperfect or surplus produce. In market gardens, some of it is not even pulled from the ground or cut. Catherine Lewis, Lewis Farms with Angus Simms, one of the Wonky Box foundersĪngus says, because of market requirements, a fair amount of produce grown by a grower doesn’t end up leave their property and is subsequently wasted.
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