Going out on a natural high

By Coran Lill

Friday 16th July 2004

Bill Bracks seems happier chatting with workers at Comvita's Te Puke site than at a capital raising roadshow, on the 32nd floor of Auckland's tallest building.

That's not to say he can't cut it in the unforgiving world of share offerings; he was probably just exhausted a colleague suggests.

"He'd done all those road shows that week ... and he's no spring chicken any more."

He certainly isn't, at 73.

In the past eight months, as chairman of Comvita, he's seen the natural health products company enter another stage of its maturity.

It has listed on the New Zealand Alternative Exchange (AX), completed a successful $7.5 million public share offering, announced a 21% increase in sales to $22.5 million, achieved a five-year compounded rate of growth of 23%, and received the consumer products exporter of the year award.

Speaking of coming of age this year Bracks was awarded the Order of Merit for services to industry.

He also announced that after 13 years on the Comvita board he will stand down next March.

In addition, he has held his own in the highly-politicised world of health regulation and as chairman of the National Nutritional Foods Association been unapologetically outspoken against the Labour government's plans to regulate the New Zealand complementary medicines sector through a joint transtasman agency.

Despite heralding such massive changes at Comvita, the decision to leave the Comvita board is the right one, he says.

"Business is as much about drama as it is about money.

"The excitement's still there. But I feel I've done what I set out to do. To grow what I believed to be a small, exciting, health-directed company and that's been a great journey."

Small and exciting?

His impressions of the Te Puke company when he first visited 14 years ago as an external consultant were tainted by his cynicism towards alternate health products.

He thought Comvita was a "folksy remedies business" and "a small town company with a small town view."

"Looking back at how far Comvita has progressed gives me a great source of personal satisfaction, but it's always a team situation.

"The level of camaraderie and team involvement at Comvita was an outstanding feature of the company. That's continuing to this day. We've tried to foster this because business is about people, not buildings and product."

Bracks pays tribute to Comvita's founder, 94-year-old Claude Stratford, who he describes as the ultimate innovator in starting Comvita.

Going out on top is also surely a factor in his decision. Bracks knows that, post-listing, Comvita is in a new phase of its long-term development.

"There are huge benefits in listing. Not the least is access to capital and spreading a company's total risk. On the downside you become more tightly regulated, more controlled and you lose flexibility. It's about a balance.

"Which is incredibly difficult."

Bracks, says Comvita chief executive Graeme Boyd, has helped put a corporate backbone into the organisation and lifted "a day to day" mentality toward big company strategic thinking.

Big company experience Bracks has.

With the exception of an ill-fated expedition owning and running a Bay of Islands restaurant "This wasn't my forte. I am a chef of amateur proportions" he has primarily worked for large corporates including WR Grace and Mobil, both here and overseas.

He left school in his hometown of Dunedin at 15 to work for the Post Office.

He worked for the Railways Department and reached detective rank in the New Zealand Police.

After quitting the police he dipped his toe in the waters of commerce and hasn't looked back.

Despite saying he wouldn't want to change a thing in his career he has what seems to be a niggling doubt that his life would have been something more if he'd gone to university.

After rational thought, he dismisses it realising he probably wouldn't be where he is now if he had gone and studied.

It's a common response among New Zealanders acknowledged on the honours' list to feign modesty.

Bracks isn't one of them. His throat tightens, his voice cracks and he describes how emotionally overwhelmed he was when he heard.

But Bill Bracks is no softy. He has strong views on corporate governance and pops into Comvita three times a week, working for the company for about 25 hours a week.

"My view is lots of problems in companies ... are due to the distance between the board and the management."

And when asked questions about himself, Bracks will invariably bring the conversation back to the companies he's involved in.

"I tend to have a love affair with the companies I work for. The reason I hang around places like Comvita for so long is because I get so attached to them.

"What I've come to learn is that health is a huge part of an individual's thoughts. The more you look into the wellness end of the health continuum, the more you become convinced that prevention is better than the cure."

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