Welcomes and goodbyes
Since the last Wire newsletter in January, we’ve been busy recruiting some new roles and warmly welcome and congratulate the following HPA employees:
- Lance Dale has been appointed as Irrigation Controller (VIC)
- Grace Irwin was promoted to Chief Marketing Officer
- Marcus McRae was appointed as Farm Hand (VIC) and has recently been working as a Processing Facility Shift Supervisor at Hop Central.
- Lindsy Greig has been appointed as the New Zealand Sales Rep
- Hamish Jolly has been appointed as Corporate Accountant
We bid farewell to Tim Lord on his well-earned retirement in April. Owen Johnston officially took over as CEO on 3 May 2025.
We have finalised the appointment for two leadership team positions. We are pleased to announce that Patrick Taskunas will join us as Chief Financial Officer, and Mick Bentley will join us as General Manager Sales, in the coming months ahead.
Sadly, we say goodbye to Ben Malcolm, Jerry Zhu and Corey Docking, who finished up with us in recent weeks. We wish them well for their future endeavours and thank them for their hard work and contributions to the business.
Next All Staff Updates
The upcoming all-staff updates will be scheduled for late July – early August, following the July Board meeting. This timing is ideal to share insights about the current business performance, feedback from the Board, and a wrap-up of the pelleting season at Hop Central. Please watch for notifications regarding the on-site sessions, as this will be an important opportunity to learn more about the business and receive general updates.
We will also be awarding HPA Values Awards to some nominated individuals in recognition for championing our core values of Safety, Teamwork, Pride, Innovation, Respect and Integrity.
Harvest training & safety
Our safety performance for our 2025 harvest was successful. The recent harvest recorded no lost-time injuries, which is quite an achievement. It is the first harvest HPA has been LTI-free since these records were first captured, starting in 2014. The initiatives and focus areas that contributed to this were:
- Comprehensive farm induction and orientation sessions for our casual harvest workers, with role-specific training with competency sign-off;
- Diligent monitoring and upgrade of our PPE requirements;
- Focus on clear daily pre-start meetings before each shift to remind workers of hazards, near misses or incidents that occurred on the previous shift;
- Communication boards with daily updates in break-out areas and sheds;
- Supervisor training sessions on delegating, communication, safety obligations, food safety and quality, and reporting requirements; and
- Recording safety observations to identify small safety issues and items to remind workers.
A huge congratulations and thank you to everyone involved in making our harvest and pelleting season a safe one.
