The modest green millionaire

The man who owns arguably the most sustainable vineyard and winery in the world doesn’t even own a suit – never has – and intends to keep it that way. He has three pairs of shoes and that includes one pair of gummies and a pair of hunting boots.

“The money thing has never really been a driver for me,” says Peter – despite the National Business Review calculating his fortune at $80 million. He drives a $5000 car – never having owned a new one in his life – and is frequently seen scouring the bargain bins at the supermarket.

“We can’t help it, we only buy specials,” he says, “we live on the sweat of an oily rag.” Much of Peter’s success he attributes to his wife of over 40 years, Vai.

“She has stood behind me right throughout everything I have had a go at with 100 per cent support,” he says, “and I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without her.”

Take a moment to appreciate Mrs Yealands. Her 64-year-old husband is a workaholic. He views weekends as just “any other day”. He has only taken four sick days in the past five years “and they weren’t really illness,” he says. “They were just really getting a finger up your arse, you know, mandatory checks when you get to my age.”

He has only taken one holiday in his life – in 1991, when he took his family for six weeks around the Pacific – the first time any of them had been overseas other than Australia. “I am basically just a back country lad,” says Peter, “I have never been comfortable in the big money or the high life and that’s the way I am.” 

The country lad in Peter shines through when it comes to being in cities: “I hate being away,” he says “whenever I am I just want to be back home.” He would rather point out that he raised a 38 point stag on his deer farm – at the time the best stag in the world – than the fact he has made millions.

In 1998, when asked to speak at a swanky event in Wellington, he turned up “nervous as hell” in what he thought of as ‘good clothes’. When he arrived the doorman took him for a labourer and pointed him to the loading bay. He made his way in through the back door, waited his turn and then enthralled the audience with his salt-of-the-earth approach.

The bad old days

In his younger years Peter says he was “sustainability’s worst enemy.”

Whether it was producing copious amounts of plastic making mussel floats, operating dozens of diesel-hungry machines or killing off the snapper that raided his mussel spat with sticks of gelignite (a practice he recommended to other farmers and even sold them explosives for), he was a far cry from the green guru he’s known as today.

The moment of enlightenment came from a love of the land rather than any foresight into the marketing gains that come from going green. Peter began pioneering sustainable forestry practices at his Kaiuma Forest Park retreat and it was there, in close contact with kaka, tui and kereru that rolled about on his lawn drunk on kowhai nectar, that he started to care.

“Watching a cluster of bellbirds attacking a ferret that was up a tree trying to get the eggs was something really special to me,” says Peter. The staunch family man could sympathise with the birds fighting to protect their own.

He was brought up in a tight family with a consistently hard work ethic – values that he holds strong to this day. He started work at eight years old, cracking walnuts in his dad’s grocery shop – and feels very lucky now to have his son Aaron working by his side at the estate.

Today he believes that his is the first winery in the world to collect vine prunings and process them on-site with clever machines that burn them cleanly in order to heat the liquid required for winemaking. Peter reckons that by displacing LPG use the winery saves 160 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

Then you have the living lawnmowers used between the vines, which have met both considerable success and spectacular failure.

Plenty thought Peter was mad when he turned up with several hundred guinea pigs, which he set free to keep the grass down. The idea was great in principle, saving fuel and time, “but we didn’t think of the bloody hawks” says Peter. “When they started coming in and carrying the guinea pigs away, squealing their heads off, well, that wasn’t such a good look.”

But he wasn’t going to let the pesky hawks get in the way of the concept. He invested considerably to bring in miniature babydoll sheep and kunekune pigs, which are working a treat. Once they have bred enough of these creatures, they reckon they will save $1.3 million a year and thousands of litres of fuel from mowing and spraying as well as creating income from meat and wool.

Green dollars

Peter’s story is classic proof that being green is not just good for the environment – it makes good business sense.

Every step of the way in creating his multi award-winning wine label, each sustainable idea put into practice has been measured and proven to be a money-saver in the long run. A new wind turbine poses the next challenge for the winery. Once installed it will contribute to the plant’s energy self-sufficiency, and now the team is working out how to sell the surplus power back to the grid.

So what advice can this hugely successful man with the warm smile and weathered hands offer?

He worries that society is now driven by greed to the extent that the sort of family structure he grew up with is collapsing: “If we had that family unit there, we wouldn’t have anywhere near the problems that we have in society today,” he says.

“To me, that’s the single biggest improvement we could make: you know, the kids coming home from school and instead of playing games on a computer, looking after the garden, that type of thing”.

Since his enlightenment at Kaiuma, he has planted millions of trees, restored over 25 wetlands and donated “hectares and hectares” of land to the Department of Conservation. Yet Peter Yealands remains a shy and practical man, someone who simply thrives off hard work and loves to dream up better ways of doing things.

“I would never expect anyone to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”

Timeline

1948 Born in Blenheim.

1956 Starts working at father’s grocery store.

1962 Leaves school aged 14.

1963 Works at the Lucerne Factory making hay and driving trucks.

1964 Starts his first business, taking hay to Nelson and the West Coast and hauling coal back to Marlborough. Meets Vai Somervail.

1968 Marries Vai.

1969 Aaron Yealands born.

1972 Danielle Yealands born.

1973 Foreman for Glenroy Products. Forms Industrial Marine Ltd – inventing, producing and selling aquaculture products.

1974 Starts fish export company.

1975 Acquires the first marine farming license in New Zealand.

Late ‘70s Starts Anakoha Mussel Farms with Murray Mears.

Early ‘80s Jointly creates Pelorus Aquaculture Ltd.

1981 Begins deer farming and sustainable forestry.

1989 Leaves the aquaculture industry, on-sells Industrial Marine Ltd.

1990 Buys Kaiuma Station.

1998 Builds first vineyard.

2001 Buys the future Yealands Estate land.

2003 Kaiuma Station wins the Marlborough Rural Environment Pastoral Award.

2006 Begins planning the Yealands ‘green’ winery building.

2007 Construction of the winery begins.

2008 Yealands Estate opens. Installation of wind turbines. Yealands Estate becomes carboNZero certified.

2009 ‘Living lawnmowers’ – miniature ‘babydoll’ sheep – used. First run of ‘Full Circle’ brand of wine in plastic bottles – an industry first. Collects the Small Business Award at the national Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority.

2010 Purchased and installed a huge boiler/burner system to harness energy from vine prunings to heat water. ‘Full Circle’ brand wins silver at the Royal Easter Wine Show. Yealands Estate named the most environmentally pioneering winery in the world by Great Wine Capitals.

2012 Estate staff join coastal clean-up with Sustainable Coastlines. Staff garden at Yealands Estate. Installs solar-powered lights and lets chicken run between the vines, controlling grass grubs without pesticides and providing eggs for staff.