Outstanding Leader in International Business

Sir Graeme Douglas is the 82-year-old managing director of New Zealand’s largest domestically-owned pharmaceutical company. He is dedicated to New Zealand and says he feels a responsibility to keep manufacturing in this country.

In the 1950s Sir Graeme worked as a pharmacist, opened his own pharmacy and started selling his own brand of products – starting with a cough syrup called Kofsin. By the 1970s, Douglas Pharmaceuticals had grown in both the importation of product and the development of its own formulations. New offices/warehousing and manufacturing premises in Henderson were custom designed and built.

In the 1980s, Douglas Pharmaceuticals introduced, under the Karicare label, a range of infant nutritionals which were well received by the market.  The range was exported to Australia and Taiwan and finally sold to Dutch company Nutricia which could offer full international distribution. 

Today, Douglas Pharmaceuticals exports more than 65 percent of its total product, principally products for dermatology, the central nervous system, oncology and immuno-suppression.

Douglas Pharmaceuticals boasts $57 million of domestic revenue each year, and employs 470 people, including one of the country’s largest field sales force networks. Export turnover has grown to over $85 million dollars from 15 different generic products which are sold to 60 companies in 35 countries. In the past year, it produced more than 455 million tablets, 270,000 litres and 31 metric tonnes of pharmaceutical medicines, liquids and creams. 

Douglas Pharmaceuticals reports low staff turnover, and extremely high levels of loyalty for Sir Graeme himself. He runs a debt-free business where he doesn’t believe in making people redundant and walks the floor regularly to chat to his employees.

Numerous charities have benefited from the benevolence of Sir Graeme (who is also a part-time shot-put coach) and his wife Lady Ngaire. They recently gave $3 million to the Starship Foundation for a new MRI scanner – the largest personal donation in the hospital’s history.

Neville Jordan is the only New Zealander to found and list a company on the NASDAQ main board.

Neville put all his assets at risk in 1975 to start a telecommunications microwave company, MAS Technology Ltd.

His leadership expanded the company internationally and at the time of its listing in 1997, it had annual revenue of over $100 million, 240 staff in 15 offices worldwide and was exporting to 60 countries.

MAS and its successors have now earned more than $1 billion in net foreign exchange for New Zealand.

But it is perhaps the benefits bestowed on his staff for which Neville is most admired. Before listing, he gifted 40 percent of MAS to all staff, recognising their outstanding ability and loyalty.

After the listing employees’ lives were transformed as they paid off mortgages, set up family education trusts and South African staff was able to fund electricity and clean water for their town.

Many former MAS staff set up technology businesses in their own right, and in turn third generation spinoffs are creating sustainable wealth for New Zealand.

Neville went on to found Endeavour Capital Ltd in 1998, subsequently attracting more than $400 million of foreign direct investment. He has forged significant partnerships in China, Saudi Arabia, Germany and the United States. Neville is fostering these new partnerships to accelerate the creation of wealth from science.

At home he is one of just three living New Zealanders to be inducted into both the Business Hall of Fame as well as the Hi-Tech Hall of Fame.  He is the only innovator to have ever been awarded the prestigious William Pickering Medal of the Institution of Professional Engineers plus the Thomson Medal of the Royal Society NZ.

His Jordan Foundation has operated for over 20 years supporting education for the disadvantaged and he is a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ‘services to telecommunications and exports’.

It is 40 years since Tom Thomson left school to work as a plastics and rubber technician. A few years later, in 1975, he joined the newly established firm of Elastomer Products Ltd and he’s been with the company ever since.

Tom headed a management buyout in 2006 (his equity partner is Independent Fisheries) and has since navigated the plastics extrusion company through the worst recessionary period of its history.

Elastomer’s export focus has centered on the key markets of the appliance, automotive and construction industries in Australia, Southeast Asia and United States. Tom has led the company’s bold move to establish a production centre in Thailand, close to New Zealand-based customers’ manufacturing facilities.

Having started on the factory floor and worked his way up, Tom has a thorough grasp of all aspects of the business. His father was a policeman and Tom believes he inherited his integrity and ethics. A former national president and life member of Plastics New Zealand, Tom is an executive board member of the New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association, fellow of New Zealand Institute of Management and is an honorary fisheries officer.

He has taken a leading role in rebuilding the Canterbury business community following the Christchurch earthquakes. This work has not come at the expense of his dedication to his own tense and stressed workforce of 150.

He says the health of his own business is vital as his staff rely on him for their livelihoods. 

With a firm belief that industry is best placed to solve its own problems, Thomson and two close industry colleagues established plastics recycler, ‘Comspec’. They are dedicated to a sustainable and environmentally responsible future for the plastic industry.

As a long-time employee and employer in the plastics industry, Tom was driven to establish a quality recycling venture. He says the Christchurch recycling company Comspec won’t necessarily make a lot of money but is contributing to the environment through plastics recycling.