Donna Wells runs a tiny fish-export company, but is footing it with the big players, writes Bill Moore
Years of dedication to building a seafood business that extends ‘‘from water to waiter’’ has brought Nelson’s Donna Wells trans-Tasman recognition, and built a platform for further growth in the industry she loves.
Ms Wells is one of only half a dozen small, independent New Zealand brokers and she has to face the additional challenge of being a woman in what is still largely a man’s world, an experience she says has been ‘‘an interesting part of the journey’’. ‘‘Sometimes the behaviours you see are like on the school playground.’’
But more than a decade since her export and brokerage business was born, her enthusiasm is undimmed, and has just been boosted by her company, Finestkind, being highly commended in the best overseas or interstatesupplier section of the biennial Sydney Fish Market Seafood Excellence Awards.
It means that she can use the commendation in all her marketing for the next two years, and places her alongside the much bigger Aotearoa Fisheries, which won the section and provided the other highly commended entry through two of its divisions, and Nelson’s New Zealand King Salmon, which was judged best aquaculture supplier – a Kiwi clean sweep.
‘‘The fact that this little company is up with those guys makes me feel good,’’ she says. And it is a little company. Ms Wells is the only full-time employee. But she has brokerage clients the length of New Zealand and sends fresh-chilled fish from the top of the south to Sydney every week, where it is sold at market at premium prices.
Her association with the seafood industry began when her then husband, Ken Wells, brought her from Auckland to the top of the south at the beginning of the 1980s. The couple took what was the revolutionary step of meeting the requirements to become exporters of their own fish, sending the catch from Mr Wells’ boat Orca to Australia from the mid-1990s. ‘‘People thought we’d fall on our faces, but we didn’t.’’ Word of their success got around, other inshore fishermen started seeking export help and Finestkind was set up in 2000, not long before the couple split. They still maintain a business relationship and Ms Wells has developed Finestkind into a combination of exporting and trading fishing quota for small companies and individual fishermen.
The intricately regulated world of quota management means that she might be handling many tonnes for one client and only a few kilograms for another. Quota shares are owned like property rights. ‘‘Every year those quota shares generate ACE – annual catch entitlement,’’ she explains. ‘‘A fisherman must cover his catch with ACE. If he doesn’t own it, he leases it from a company or sources it independently. Every fish in the quota system must be covered by ACE or they incur a deemed value.’’
So she is sometimes sourcing small quantities of ACE to cover bycatch, even at levels that are not cost-effective but keep the fisherman within the rules. At other times, she might be asked to find five tonnes or 50 tonnes. Working on commission, her job is to link up buyers and sellers. It can be a fiendishly complicated business, but Ms Wells, like the biggest commercial fishing ventures, strongly supports the quota management system and its focus on sustainability.
‘‘It works, and there are penalties if you get it wrong, so therefore we don’t get it wrong, or try not to,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s held up to the rest of the world as a shining example – I don’t see us getting a lot of positive feedback as an industry, and I think we should.
We get it right on a lot of occasions and for a little country we’re doing very well.’’ She is sometimes frustrated by criticisms offered by ‘‘the Green element’’ which she feels is trying to curtail commercial fishing without realising either its professionalism or its importance. ‘‘For a start, Nelson’s the biggest fishing port in Australasia. One in four people in this town is employed in or connected with the seafood industry.’’ She has exported to Japan and the Untied States in the past, and hopes to do so again, but her shipments currently go to Sydney, typically 300kg trucked to Christchurch and airfreighted across the Tasman.
Fish landed at Nelson on Monday morning are sold at the Sydney Fish Market on Wednesday morning, and she says its easier and quicker to export fish to Sydney than to road freight it to Auckland. A significant part of what she handles is blue cod caught in pots by French Pass fisherman Craig Aston and she attributes her award in large part to the professionalism of Mr Aston and his wife, Christine. She also handles the catch of three other inshore boats fishing into Port Nelson. ‘‘The people who fish for me have the same philosophy I do – we want to do it better every time. It’s good enough when it’s perfect.’’
Her exports include flounder, butterfish (sold as greenbone in Australia and said to be film star Russell Crowe’s favourite), snapper, john dory, gurnard, octopus, hapuka, bluenose, conger eel and some shellfish, and she says she can’t keep up with demand. Fishermen have faced rising costs in recent years and that, along with other changes, has reduced the inshore fleet. But Ms Wells says those who have stuck it out will probably keep going, because, like her, they’ve found a niche that they fit.
For Finestkind, opportunities are everywhere. It’s a matter of identifying and concentrating on the ones that work best. As in insider, she can’t offer an answer to the perennial question of why fish costs so much in Nelson, the premier fishing port. ‘‘There’s a huge transition from what the fisherman gets paid to what you find in the supermarket – and that would make a good story. ‘‘I know for a fact that our scallops are going out of Nelson for $34 to $40 a kilogram and they’re being sold at $70 a kg in Auckland, but I’m not a retailer.’’