The Green family business is in the process of transforming itself, having gained Sir Brian Roche as its chairman and working to participate in the Labour-led government’s KiwiBuild policy.
The family patriarch, Hugh Green, who died in 2012, “did all the hard work” by buying a number of farms in the wider Auckland region, which the Hugh Green Group has been gradually developing into housing subdivisions as the city has encroached and made such development feasible, his son, John (pictured), explains.
The group owns five farms, three of which are in locations of interest to the KiwiBuild scheme.
In the past, the group has simply been a developer in the “develop, sell and run” mould.
The group is also continuing both its other commercial development and leasing operations as well as its traditional farming operations and still runs weekly livestock sales at Pukekohe
But John says it now wants to be more of a “community builder” and to build schools, parks and other community infrastructure for village-type projects along the lines of the public-private project at Hobsonville.
It’s early days but the group is looking at possibly retaining ownership of the commercial buildings and leasing them out and that the housing planned is likely to be a mix of both affordable homes as well as homes sold on the open market.
“It’s quite a change in outlook from what we’ve done for the past 10 or 15 years,” John says.
He sits on the Hugh Green Group board but has stepped down from being the chief executive of the philanthropic arm, Hugh Green Foundation, although he remains a trustee.
The foundation’s latest available accounts for the year ended March 2017 show it spent nearly $5 million in donations that year with its main focus on medical research and innovation, poverty relief through education and community development.
John has said that his father used to say, “I’ll give you a hand up, not a hand out,” and that’s the principle the foundation tries to follow.
“He was the same with everyone. He was the same with us kids – you didn’t get anything for nothing, you had to work for it.”
On the business side, the group sold its major listed investments in Hellaby Holdings and Turners Automotive Group last year and the family also settled a long-running dispute over the estate.
Hugh Green was born into poverty in Ireland’s County Donegal as the fifth of eight children. Both parents were alcoholic and ran a pub, a heritage that made him a teetotaller for most of his life.
He left Ireland in 1949 at the age of 17 and arrived in New Zealand in 1952, forming a partnership with his friend, Barney McCahill in 1953 called Green & McCahill (Contractors) Ltd.
To begin with, the partners joined their workers with picks and shovels working on digging trenches and laying cable for the then Post and Telegraph Department.
The company later worked on projects from drainage and roading to Marsden Point and the Te Marua storage lakes near Wellington.
He and Mr McCahill separated their interests in 2003.
Photo: New Zealand Herald/newspix.co.nz