The NZ merino station helping clothing brand Patagonia save Mother Earth
Sunday, 28 June 2026
Around the dining table at Castle Hill sheep and beef station, over a round of potato-topped mince pies, the van de Klundert and Hann families explain their regenerative farming philosophy to the decision-makers from global outdoor-wear giant Patagonia.
“We see ourselves as guardians, as custodians of this land. You are only here for a short time, but the land will be here forever,” says farm manager Anne Hann.
Through the window can be seen the magnificent Castle Hill rocks (Kura Tāwhiti), where some scenes from Lord of the Rings were filmed, and which are of great cultural and spiritual significance for locals, including Ngāi Tahu and Waitaha.
Listening are three executives from Patagonia, which has a growing presence in New Zealand, and which is unique among global retailers in being owned by Mother Earth, having been gifted by its founder Yvon Chouinard in 2022.
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They are Sarah Hayes, who heads up Patagonia’s material development, Carrie Childs, designer director for its lifestyle essentials & kids clothing ranges, and Mark Little, senior business director for its lifestyle essentials.
They were in New Zealand to ink long-term deals for local merino wool through Zentera, the Christchurch-based company that operates the ZQ+ regeneratively farmed wool scheme.
There’s rising demand among a subset of shoppers for clothing made from natural fibres, and for those fibres to be sourced from growers who are not damaging the environment.
“It’s nice to be around like-minded folks,” Little tells the van de Klunderts and Hanns.
“Our business is owned by Mother Earth. We love working for her,” he says.
Patagonia’s own brutal assessment of its own performance at its last balance day was the equivalent of a child at school getting an “improved, but must do better” assessment from their teacher.
In its 2025 “impact report”, founder Chouinard said: “The pursuit of short-term profit and mindless consumption are destroying the planet, and it is bad for most businesses.”
Every product the company made took irreplaceable resources from the planet, Patagonia chief executive Ryan Gellert wrote.
Which is why Patagonia is increasingly focused on regenerative agriculture, sourcing natural fibres produced by growers who are actively trying to leave the land a little better each year than it was before.
“Imagine what could happen if interest groups and lobbyists prioritised planetary and human health over environmental deregulation,” Chouinard said.
Regenerative merino
Regenerative agriculture is a term for farming methods that restore soil health, improve biodiversity and, depending on the operation, head in the right direction on climate change.
If it’s done well, it can be good business. It can command higher prices for products like merino wool for producers.
It’s not entirely coincidental that high country stations are into regenerative agriculture.
There’s an element of making a virtue of necessity.
The kind of people attracted to buying the high country station operations, often operating under long-term leases on Crown-owned land, include those with an eye for majestic landscapes, the environment, and a flare for finding ways to make the land pay without putting more pressure on it.
But perhaps more crucially, there are restrictions on Crown leases designed to prevent intensive agriculture.
These exist to protect the magnificent landscapes, and the rare fauna and flora on them.
There are limits on stock numbers, for example, and new fencing.
Happily, the beauty and nature of the landscapes the high country stations operate in lend themselves to income diversification.
High country diversified incomes
The 40,000 hectare Mt White Station, owned by Czech millionaire businessman Lukas Travnicek, has a high-end tourism operation, and luxury lodge from which views are so beautiful it feels like a crime to sleep in and miss the sun’s first light striking the snowy tops of the mountains.
It markets treks to remote high country huts, residential painting experiences with renowned local artists, horse-trekking, mountain-biking, and farm, shepherding, and beekeeping experiences.
It hosts corporate events, and has a growing mānuka honey and honeydew operation, which intends to become a household name as it eyes expansion.
Honeydew is a honey-like substance that derives from the sap of native beech trees in the South Island.
While honey is made by bees from nectar collected from flowers, they make honeydew from the sweet, sugary droplets excreted by tiny scale insects living on the bark of beech trees.
Expanding the honey and honeydew operation means expanding native bush cover on the station; a win for the business, and a win for nature.
On Castle Hill station, native bush, including manuka is also regenerating. In an area of 20-year-old mānuka, the song of bellbirds and tūī rings out. Native kākā parrots are also now seen from time to time.
Patagonia’s plan for wool
After the mince pies at Castle Hill Station have been washed down with cups of tea, Anne and Jason Hann take the Patagonia executives on a tour of the station, including a photo stop at the incredible rock formations that give it its name.
The real reason Patagonia staffers are here is not to take photos, but to bury their hands in the fleeces of the merino sheep whose wool they company intends to use for some of its 2028 garment lines.
Jason Hann tells them the insulation provided by the merino fleece is so complete that through an infra-red night-hunting scope, not a trace of sheep’s body warmth is visible.
Little explains that Patagonia is evaluating where synthetic materials sit in the company’s clothing lines.
Patagonia’s clothing model is to make long-life clothing that is designed to be repaired.
But the company is heavily dependent on synthetics, and there is growing demand for natural fibres.
“Wool is one of those really great opportunities for us to not sacrifice on the performance of some of our synthetic spots, and start blending wool in, or even just doing full 100% wool,” he says.
“That is the driver and the catalyst to why we're here learning more about the supply chain and about the qualities of wool.”
Growing the merino flock
For companies like Patagonia, scale and certainty of supply are key for embracing a new fibre source into its manufacturing.
That’s where Zentera, the company that used to be called The New Zealand Merino Company, comes in.
It’s a Christchurch-based company that markets merino, and other wools to the world, and helps wool growers in New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania do deals with the likes of Patagonia.
It was set up by wool grower John Brakenridge in 1995 in an effort to shift the wool industry from relying on volatile commodity market pricing, and onto longer-term higher-value contracts with major global brands.
It was an effort that earned Brakenridge enemies at the time, and even resulted in anonymous threats against his life as his company threatened vested interests in the wool trade.
“A big part of what we do is assure the brands that we can supply the wool they need, the wool that they've forecasted,” says Natalie Norman, Zentera’s head of sales and success.
Growers also need the confidence that comes from long-term contracts, which embolden them to invest in their businesses, including increasing their flocks.
Zentera shares are now traded on the USX Unlisted Securities Exchange, on which Zespri and Silver Fern Farm shares are also traded, and after a restructuring, its latest annual report shows it is in robust financial shape.
Patagonia loves to have a story to tell
In its bid to underpin wool pricing, Zentera operates environmental schemes designed to assure companies like Patagonia of the environmental credentials of the wool they market.
Its ZQ+ certification scheme, which covers both Castle Hill and Mt White, certifies that wool is grown regeneratively. Periodic auditing covers soil and water health, as well as animal wellbeing.
Patagonia’s move to secure regeneratively-farmed wool follows its drive into regeneratively farmed cotton during the past eight years.
“It was inspired by our founder who was doing a ton of reading about soil health and the criticalness of soil health and the ability for soil to sequester carbon as one of the critical ways that we can look at mitigating what was happening in the climate,” says Hayes.
“That got him thinking about, you know, our cotton fibre,” she says.
Last year, Patagonia executives experienced the threat of a drought-related natural disaster.
Little had to evacuate his home in Ventura, the Californian city in which Patagonia is based when it was threatened by a terrifying wild fire that made global headlines.
In 2017, Patagonia got together with other companies to form the US-based Regenerative Organic Alliance to build a certification scheme to be sure their suppliers were genuinely engaged in regenerative agriculture.
Cotton suppliers from India, Peru and Texas all got on board.
“Our first regenerative, organic [cotton] collection came out in 2020,” Hayes says.
That collection came out as the US went to the polls with ageing incumbent president Donald Trump seeking to remain in power, and ageing challenger Joe Biden attempting to unseat him.
The labels on its organic cotton goods contained the controversial phrase “vote the assholes out”, though the company insisted the labels were not aimed at Trump and the US Republican Party, but at all politicians who denied climate change was a real, man-made phenomenon.
Wool on the rise
The regenerative merino story is part of a wider uptick in the wool industry, with prices now around decade highs.
It’s a far cry from a year ago.
At the 2025 Fieldays in Mystery Creek in Hamilton, Federated Farmers presented “Save our Sheep” T-shirts to politicians, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and Labour leader Chris Hipkins.
A year later, and wool is doing well, with prices up, and growers feeling more buoyant.
However, wool growers have seen enough over the years to remain level-headed on pricing.
“After a big spike like this, there is usually a bit of a rebalancing,” says Norman. “But it's very hard to know how long it will take, and and how quickly the prices will come back down.”
However, long-term supply deals put a floor that growers can live with.
Patagonia isn’t the only brand that’s been in country in recent months to secure supply of merino wool.
In April, global fashion brand Chanel announced it had invested in the Lammermoor Station organic wool farm in Otago.
Patagonia is expanding its retail business in New Zealand as well. It has plans for an Auckland store in the Britomart area, adding to its stores in Queenstown and Wellington.
Its model is that any profits left over after reinvesting in its business are streamed to local charities involved with environmental projects.
Summing up the executives’ visit to Mt White and Castle Hill, Little says: “Patagonia's mission statement is we're in business to save the home planet. Each of the farmers we met with, I feel like that's their vision. We want to leave it better than we found it.”
Rob Stock was a guest of Zentera/Patagonia at Mt White, and his flights and accommodation were covered by the two companies.