Graeme and Craig Turner continue to oversee the family’s Comfort Group, which is Australasia’s largest mattress and foam manufacturer.
The Group has a long-held reputation for quality, particularly through its well-known Sleepyhead brand. Last year, Sleepyhead was yet again named one of New Zealand’s most trusted brands in the annual Reader’s Digest Trusted Brands poll. The company is also a successful exporter, sending around 300 beds a day to China.
The firm recently announced plans for a new $1 billion manufacturing and affordable housing community at Ohinewai, just north of Huntly in Waikato. It has bought 176ha of rural land and wants to build up to 1100 houses priced at under $500,000 each for its staff, as well as a new manufacturing and distribution plant.
Sleepyhead hopes its first factory stage will be completed by the end of next year and the community development will be staged over 10 years.
It’s unclear how much the move has to do with continued problems at the Comfort Group’s proposed factory in Mangere. Though the company first mooted the factory in 2013, envisioning it as a consolidation of its various Auckland operations, it has been hamstrung by various issues.
Last year critics raised health and environmental concerns, centred on the use and storage of hazardous chemicals.
The Turner family has a long history of involvement in the Comfort Group. Though the company was started by Arthur Mudd in 1935, it has been in the hands of the Turners since Sidney Turner bought it in 1946. Graeme began working in the factory’s plant at the age of 8 during school holidays, while Craig began there in the early 1970s. The pair bought out their uncle in 1979.
Though the day-to-day running of the company is now in the hands of the fourth generation of Turners, Graeme and Craig are still heavily involved. They frequently make appearances on the factory floor, and are constantly looking to improve the manufacturing process. Last year their efforts saw them inducted into the NZ Business Hall of Fame.
Graeme Turner told the NZ Herald this year the business was his life: “I just love it. It’s in my blood. There’s nothing in this business I haven’t done.”
The Comfort Group employs more than 1200 people across Australia and New Zealand. Alongside Sleepyhead are the Dunlop Foams, Sleepmaker, Simmons, Dunlopillo, Design Mobel and Serta brands.
2018: $175 million