Bankrupt Smiths City owner sought to save jobs and open up opportunities

Wednesday, 1 April 2026

ANALYSIS: The business of buying distressed businesses and turning them around is risky and tough. And another aphorism springs to mind: “You don’t buy a TV to eat”.

The latter was coined by businessman Colin Neal, who for almost six years now has been there with his chequebook when relatively high profile, nationwide businesses need rescuing. His driver, he told media years ago, was in keeping people employed. And he also loved that thing that businesspeople everywhere enjoy - finding the opportunity in a crisis.

Pragmatic and operating mainly on a common sense basis, he’s also known for being a brutal decision maker when he felt the situation required it.

Now, times have been brutal to him.

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The High Court at Christchurch has adjudged Neal bankrupt. He had amassed more than $1 million in debts as a result of signing personal guarantees on commercial leases for Smith City stores.

It was the conclusion of a salvage operation that went awry and started when Neal’s Polar Capital purchased the more than 100-year-old Smiths City out of receivership in May 2020 for about $60 million (paying $8m in cash and assuming the rest in debts).

An overhaul ensued. The company rebranded, changed its logo and livery, refurbished its stores and chopped seven of them from its network (extinguishing the jobs of 115 staff in the process), recommitted to the regions and modernised its tech systems over five years. Neal spent $6.4 million of his own money on the process.

Sadly, even the most whizz-bang refurb was unable to weather an economic downturn in 2025, and the furniture, electronics and appliances store had long since lost its unique space in the cluttered homewares space. It folded in September, leaving up to $27m in liabilities and 240 companies out of pocket.

Neal, not one given to blubbing in the media, explained in his no-nonsense way to The Post why Smiths City had ended the way it had as New Zealand grappled with a cost of living crisis: “It’s the economy … you don't buy a TV to eat”.

He said all of homewares was experiencing a similar dip of about 40% since the end of the post-Covid homewares boom in 2023. He was sad, but philosophical: “Retail is tough.”

Potted history

Even if retail is tough, it did not stop Neal consistently investing in it. But he did not begin in retail. Neal’s history in business started with a single cooled truck that delivered pies between Tauranga and Auckland established in the 1990s, a business he grew to a fleet of 280 trucks and trailers.

Business partner Mark Shapland joined him in 2003, with each man owning half of Big Chill Distribution.

The pair sold the business to NZX-listed logistics and courier firm Freightways in 2019 for $117m, and Neal immediately set about buying undervalued, underutilised or distressed businesses with his almost $70m cash pile paid to him over three years.

2020 was a huge year for his vehicle Polar Capital, seeing it hoover up a range of food businesses - Bay Cuisine, Exquisite Foods, Esk Valley Meats and South Island Fresh (they are now consolidated into Napier-based Bay Cuisine). It then spent $4m to attain an almost 24% shareholding in NZX-listed Moa, a brewing and hospitality business. After the beer part of the business was hived off, the listed firm’s name changed to Savor Group; Polar continues to hold about 8% of the company.

In 2020 Polar also bought an almost 20% stake in food processing technology company Mercer Group for a reported $2.5m, and later sold out as the company was renamed MHM Automation.

Also in 2020, Polar Capital purchased Smiths City ($8m plus its debts); the ailing Pricewise beauty chain’s assets for $2.3m, and a majority share in Jucy Rentals for an undisclosed amount, a day after receivers had been appointed. In 2021, Polar purchased Hello Foods, a wholesale food manufacturing and distribution business specialising in ready-to-eat meals.

Good and bad

It is impossible to discount Covid as a factor in the fate of some of the businesses Neal has tried to turn around, although others may ask why the businessman attempted such heroic feats of financial daring-do during a pandemic. Neal himself is not keen to dissect his ups and downs at this point.

But it has not all been bad. While Smith’s City has been the most financially significant, and the most catastrophic personally for Neal, the Jucy Rentals deal saw Polar Capital save jobs, as Neal had originally hoped.

In Covid, New Zealand’s borders were closed and tourism-related businesses were decimated, including Jucy, which saw its revenue plummet by 90% almost overnight.

Polar’s involvement, which saw it and the Cushing family buy in as majority stakeholders for an undisclosed sum, was credited with 'saving' the iconic campervan brand, preserving 150 jobs. Polar whittled back its holding to 7.5% after Australia’s Next Capital bought in, in 2022, and has since sold out altogether.

The Hello Foods story did not end so well. The Christchurch-based high-volume producer of fresh salads, coleslaw, and ready-to-eat meals was supplying the likes of Pams in Woolworth supermarkets when Polar Capital saw the opportunity to build a vertically integrated food group with its other acquisitions. Covid destroyed its revenues and receivers were called in, in 2023, but not before its assets were bought by another Polar Capital company, Bay Cuisine.

The company was liquidated owing $11m to creditors and over $1m in tax, and 50 jobs were lost.

Finally, there was Pricewise. Polar bought a 34% stakeholder in the nationwide health and beauty retailer after the first Covid lockdown, but called the receivers in four months later when the company missed a payment to Polar, which had loaned $1.5m to the ailing business. Unusually for New Zealand, there were fractious scenes and police called as receivers came in and fired the founders, Andrew and Gill Berryman. Ultimately the business was liquidated with outstanding debts of $200,000.

The Post contacted Andrew Berryman to see if he had any thoughts of the bankruptcy of Neal, after seeing the tougher side of the businessman through the Pricewise receivership process. He did not want to comment.

But another, who commented but did not want to be named, said Neal had not always been right in his decision making, but had at least tried to give businesses another chance: “He didn’t just sit tight with his money; he was always wanting to make something bigger and better that would provide jobs to people. You don’t always see that with people who end up with a pile of cash.”