A lovely bunch of coconuts
Our new energy food’s hand-made at home.
The emergence of Covid-19 in 2020 has been a game-changer for a lot of companies. We’re happy to report that the testing times have provided a silver lining here at Topflite – we’re now on track to make almost our entire range of energy food here in New Zealand. This month the work started on our coconut feeders…
While our seed is grown at our farms, in the past we’ve had to rely on manufacturing from overseas for our energy food range.
“Previously this whole range was imported from the UK,” says Greg Webster, our general manager. “However they weren’t able to continue exporting to us during Covid-19 so we had to think fast.”
After a bit of back and forth through research and development we established that we could keep the product exactly the same as it always has been with locally sourced vegetable oils and fat.
“We took the plunge and invested in the machinery, technology and innovation ourselves,” says Greg. “Now we will be able to make almost our entire range of energy food, our energy cakes, logs, truffles and coconut feeders right here at home.
With a wait for the necessary machinery we had to think fast before running out of stock. So we rolled up our sleeves (quite literally) and got stuck in.
The results are impressive – we’ve now produced over 4000 coconuts by hand-filling coconut shells with an energy food mix we know birds love and thrive on.
Since the initial run of coconut feeders the new equipment has arrived, ensuring we’ll be able to meet demand in the months ahead. Which is just as well – as more and more New Zealanders are proudly buying locally-made products we’re finding this demand is growing day by day!
Read more from us
Seed bombs: Weapons of mass germination
How to create a springtime feast for birds
Embrace the chaos
A boon for biodiversity, chaos gardening takes a natural approach to garden planning, with flowers growing alongside vegetables, plants left to go to seed, and straight rows given over to haphazardness.