In 1979 Jan and Bruce Henderson settled on a property in the far north of New Zealand. The warm sunny sheltered valley was ideal for macadamia trees. The dream was to grow macadamias in an ecological way and sell them New Zealand wide.
Our Trees
Macadamia trees take up to four years after planting to produce their first nuts, and up to ten years before they produce a viable commercial crop.
In the orchard there are three varieties of macadamia trees (Beumont; Own Choice; and Nelmac I), which gives our products a great depth of flavour.
Maintaining the trees, mowing the orchard and keeping away pests is important in ensuring a great crop. NewmacZ have some novel employees in the orchard pest control department; the Kune kune pigs. The pigs have the vital role of eating all the nuts that fall on the ground; this also causes the pigs to have the silkiest coats of any Kunekune pig ever seen.
Picking
The trees are hand picked by the Henderson family, with the help of occasional casual pickers when crops are literally falling off the trees.
One of the varieties of trees has thorny leaves making hand picking a laborious but necessary task.
Our Drying and Cracking Equipment
After picking the outer green fibrous husk is removed and the nut is now encased in a hard outer brown shell. In the drying room this is dried for a month or more until the moisture content is reduced to less than one percent.
The macadamia is a tough nut to crack. The extremely hard shell, which protects the kernel, is removed by an ingenious machine, which we have designed after years of development.
We can also provide drying and cracking services to other local growers who lack the equipment to process the nuts they grow. For more information about this service please feel free to contact us.
Processing and Packing
After cracking the nuts are hand sorted to ensure you get only the best nuts.
The nuts may then be packed as raw nuts, or further processed by oven roasting, and flavouring, or processing into nut butter.
Finally the products are packed, labeled, and ready for you to buy and eat!
