Foodstuffs North Island in New Zealand is using Unimogs and a helicopter to get supplies of essential goods to communities cut off in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.
The company has urged consumers to buy only what they need as it works to get supplies in – a massive challenge in Hawkes Bay and East Cape especially where main highways look set to be closed for days if not weeks, due to washouts, collapsed bridges and landslides.
“To everyone affected, please know our teams have been working around the clock,” Foodstuffs North Island CEO Chris Quin said. “We’ve got the stock, we’ve got the plan and we’ve got the means to get essential items to you as we support your towns and communities to recover.”
All Pak’nSave stores have now reopened and just one New World store remains closed – in the Napier suburb of Onekawa which was as of early this morning isolated by floodwaters that have yet to recede. When it can, Foodstuffs will deliver an electricity generator to the store to enable it to reopen. Power remains cut to some 40,000 houses in Napier, according to local media.
Seven smaller Four Squares in Hawkes Bay have not yet been able to open.
On Friday, the company was “heartbroken” by the news that one of its staff was among the eight confirmed victims of the cyclone. Marie Greene, who lost her life at home, worked on the checkouts at the New World Greenmeadows store in Napier and was described as “a generous and kind people-person who was much loved by her team-mates”.
Quin said the biggest logistics hurdle the company was trying to overcome was road access across the two regions.
“To get stock through in the past 24 hours we’ve used back roads, Unimogs and we’ve contracted a helicopter that can lift two to three tonnes to get essentials like toilet paper and water into stores that cannot yet get deliveries by road,” he said.
“Replenishing isolated communities is our absolute focus. While there’s lots of great work going on to clear slips and reopen roads, people need the essentials now. We have a plan to re-open each store and we have the required stock and resources to make it happen.”
Foodstuffs’ Hastings depot – about 20km from Napier – is being used as a staging point with the helicopter helping shift up to 40 pallets of stock and technology, such as Starlink kits for connecting to the internet, into the communities of Wairoa – and further north to Tokomaru Bay, Tologa Bay and Ruatoria in the East Cape region.
Foodstuffs’ HereforNZ team is working with community partners like Civil Defense Centres, Foodbanks, Social Supermarkets, City Missions, community trusts and charities like Butter Bean Motivation to provide support to people who urgently need food and other essentials. Quin said the company has given at least NZ$260,000 worth of food and goods to our partners.
“A huge shout out to our incredible teams for their heroic work and for continuing to go the extra mile every hour, while we make sure we get essentials to New Zealanders to recover from the devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle,” he concluded.
Rival Countdown has given $200,000 and is donating critical products to organisations providing support on the ground.
Just one of its stores remained closed as of Thursday – Countdown Carlyle in Napier South.
Countdown management has asked customers to buy only the supplies they need and to be considerate to each other and to team members in-store.
