Cut and dried

Slices of New Zealand fruity goodness are feeding homesick Kiwis and newfound fans overseas, thanks to an innovative Nelson company.

LITTLE BEAUTIES IS an export idea that began with a feijoa-loving Nelson farmer and a trip to Europe. The concept looped through a Kiwi expatriate’s New York community and a leading design firm in that city before bouncing back to the South Island where it grew to embrace more family members, more growers, extra investors and some messy and disastrous experiments involving dehydration equipment. Now, the resulting crunchy fruit snacks are flying off to Australian and American warehouses in bright foil packets.
    Technically speaking, these packages contain dried fruit but Little Beauties’ products are a world away from wrinkled raisins or chewy apricots. The company’s freeze-dried blueberries are unexpectedly large, dusky purple orbs, with a sweet crispiness – like feather-light blueberry popcorn. The range includes freeze-dried raspberries, boysenberries and gold kiwifruit – some dipped in chocolate – as well as tangy, intensely flavoursome feijoa wedges. The latter is a notoriously fickle fruit. It bruises easily, keeps and travels poorly and has a short growing season, with yields and sweetness levels that swing wildly from one season to the next. But former dairy farmer Ian Wastney found inspiration in Italy and returned home determined to mass plant his favourite fruit trees Italianstyle, on a gorse-covered slope where his family had farmed for five generations.
The transformed terraced hill grew fine feijoas, and Wastney found himself with mountains of rejects that proved uneconomical to sell. So he did what his wife Sally had always done with excess from their home orchard; he pulled out the trusty dehydrator and roped in the help of some of the couple’s five adult children.
    “It was a nightmare,” Ian’s son, Little Beauties’ co-founder and general manager Tristan Wastney says of the company’s humble beginnings. “We were slicing the fruit by hand, turning it by hand. We were using little domestic dryers, then Dad and a mate turned a fridge into a dryer. That wasn’t big enough, so they built a custom rotary-type dryer using a fridge compressor. It was still way too small. It only did 150kg of fruit at a time, which when you’re only yielding 7-10 percent back in dried fruit, is not much.”

The world’s best and most unique fruit is grown here in New Zealand. There’s nothing quite like our products anywhere else.

The Wastneys started selling sliced dried fruit at Nelson farmers’ market in 2010 and continued experimenting with air- and freeze-drying methods. They learned the hard way how to stop feijoas from browning and how to dry boysenberries without creating a syrupy mess. They also sent samples to Tristan’s US-based younger brother Alexander, who in turn shared them with homesick Kiwis and to intrigued Americans who had never encountered a feijoa. Alexander’s enthusiastic colleagues – he worked at a design agency – insisted the fruit should be branded and packaged for sale overseas. “My dad thought there could be something in this. He saw the export potential,” says Tristan.
    This year, the business will process about 120 tonnes of gold kiwifruit alone and that volume is expected to jump to more than 200 tonnes next year. Feijoa volumes are forecast to double in that same period, from 50 to 100 tonnes, thanks largely to some Callaghan Innovation funding that has helped automate much of the process. And they continue to experiment with ways to utilise fruit waste, turning boysenberry pulp and kiwifruit skins into powders and other products. Most of the fruit they buy 4 would otherwise go to waste or be fed to cattle. “We’re trying to find a home for every part of the fruit and make sure no fruit is left unpicked,” he says.
    Tristan gave up a dairy farm management job to help develop the business, which now employs 20 people, including two family members and their wives, as well as chief executive Rob Simcic. When COVID locked down the nation last year, he taught himself to build websites and made promotional videos in his garage. During the latest lockdown period, the former farm manager focused on export and distribution logistics within Australia and the US. The company started selling directly to consumers in both countries this year.
The Little Beauties team is determined to continue buying produce from Kiwi orchardists, he says. “Maybe we’re naive but we’ve got high expectations and hefty goals. We work with as many local growers as possible and pay them what their fruit is worth. We could import cheaper fruit from offshore, but we believe the world’s best and most unique fruit is grown here in New Zealand. There’s nothing quite like our products anywhere else in the world.”
    Little Beauties has partnered with Christchurch-based ethical chocolatemakers Trade Aid, for its chocolate-dipped range, and teamed up with iwi-based Bay of Plenty company Miro, which grows those huge blueberries so suited to freeze-drying.
    “Our raspberries are grown in the Nelson area. They’re a local variety that’s large, firm and sweet – and we know exactly where they’ve come from. If you do a blind taste test with other imported berries, you can really taste and see the difference. Ours taste like a teaspoon of raspberry jam.”


www.littlebeauties.kiwi