If ComCom agrees, fractured Turners fruit and veg empire will be reunited
Thursday, 2 July 2026
The two competing companies that evolved out of the family of Edward Turner, who with his sons developed Turners & Growers over 100 years ago, look set to be joined again as one if the Commerce Commission allows it.
The commission said last night it had received an application from J&P Turner Limited (JPT) seeking clearance to buy Turners & Growers Fresh Limited (T&G Fresh).
JPT, via its company Fresh Direct Ltd, wholesales and distributes locally grown and imported fresh fruits and vegetables throughout New Zealand from six locations across the country. It also undertakes packing, ripening, temperature-controlled metro transport, and processing of certain fruits. It has a small cherry export business as well.
T&G Fresh meanwhile grows, transports and imports produce. Like JPT it also wholesales fresh fruit and vegetables across New Zealand, but also provides transportation services for third-party customers and growers.
Read more:
German parent of NZ’s largest fruit and vege grower looking to hock it off
Iconic fruit & veg producer T&G could be flicked off by troubled German parent
Listed horticulturalist reports bumper crops, profit at the half year
JPT is part of the J&P Turner group of companies (JPT Group), and is owned by members of the Turner family who are descended from Edward Turner, who emigrated from England and established Turners Mart in Auckland during the 1890s.
That business became Turners & Growers, which for nearly 70 years was the country’s dominant produce monopoly.
But in 1994, when corporate raiders Guinness Peat Group (GPG) led by Ron Brierley, bought into Turners & Growers (T&G) - acquiring a 42% stake which it incrementally grew to 74% - it prompted the usual seismic activity resulting from GPG involvement - fierce legal battles and bracing corporate restructuring.
By 2003, as a result of the restructuring ordered by Brierley and his right-hand man Tony Gibbs, no members of the Turner family were left in executive management or on the board of T&G. The next year, the company listed on the NZX.
Meanwhile, family members Jeffery and Peter Turner broke away entirely to establish a competitor in J&P Turner / Fresh Direct.
By 2011, GPG was forced to liquidate its entire global portfolio of 48 companies and return cash to shareholders. Its almost 74% stake in T&G was sold to German trading and logistics conglomerate BayWa AG. BeyWa AG has itself encountered trouble, having to completely restructure itself and jettison many of its global investments, including T&G, after an aggressive, debt-fuelled expansion into green energy pushed it into severe financial distress.
While publicly listed, T&G Global is effectively still owned by BayWa with a 73.99% holding and almost 20% by Joy Ming Mau Group of HK, China. It operates three divisions – Apples (ENZA), T&G Fresh Limited (T&G Fresh), and VentureFruit (the owner of their biological IP including that of Envy and Jazz apples).
Documents laying out JPT’s proposal say the area both companies compete most strongly in - the wholesale supply of fresh fruit and vegetables in New Zealand, a trade worth at least $2.5 billion - is “fragmented, dynamic and highly competitive.
“It comprises thousands of growers (both domestic and overseas-based) and large numbers of wholesalers (including importers) and retail customers. There are many options for growers to sell, and retailers and end consumers to buy, fresh produce…
“Wholesaling has been declining for decades, due to larger producers trading directly with processors, retailers and customers, and this is certainly very much the case in the fresh produce industry.” Trading floors have also increasingly closed as deals for produce are being done directly rather than through the kinds of auctions central to the T&G business model.
JPT posits that the combined entity would be “severely constrained in its ability to increase prices or reduce quality” with all the competition.
The amount of market share the two parties hold of the wholesaling market is redacted in the papers posted to the commission website.
The purchase price for T&G Global is also redacted. The company’s value based on its stock is $294.1m, with its stock having gained a third in value over the year.
In the material, JPT said it saw itself as a “custodian of the (now reduced) wholesale sector of the New Zealand fresh produce industry that the Turner family have been associated with for 140 years.
“It has a keen desire to ensure that New Zealand growers and customers continue to succeed, and its track record of supporting small growers, retailers and wholesalers (including new entrants) demonstrates this.”