Powering New Zealand’s wild birds

The supply chain disruptions of the pandemic years encouraged us to hit fast-forward on a few plans. As a result, the Topflite Wild Bird Energy range is now 100% made at home.  

Although the pandemic years caused so much upheaval, we do have the lockdowns to thank for helping us to notice the little things. In particular, New Zealanders started to pay attention to the beauty of local birdlife on a much larger scale. Just look at the jump in New Zealand Garden Survey participants since 2020 as evidence. 

That period also allowed us (like many others) to look at our business differently – our Wild Bird Energy range in particular.

While the seed for Topflite’s wild bird seed range has always come from our founding farm and growing partners, we had to rely on overseas manufacturers for our Wild Bird Energy range in the past.

A lovely bunch of coconuts

“Previously the whole range was imported from the UK,” says Greg Webster, Managing Director and Owner. “However they weren’t able to continue exporting to us during the pandemic so we had to think fast.”

Our Coconut Feeders had long been one of our most popular products and we were particularly keen to keep them on the shelves with so many more New Zealanders experiencing the joy of watching backyard birdlife.

After a bit of back and forth through research and development we established that we could keep the Energy recipe exactly the same as it always had been, but make it with locally sourced vegetable oils and fat.

However, with a wait for the necessary machinery, we had to move fast before running out of stock. So we rolled up our sleeves (quite literally) and got stuck in.

Looking back, the results were impressive – we produced over 4000 Wild Bird Coconut Feeders by hand-filling coconut shells. 

An investment in New Zealand-made

“In hindsight it was a great decision to take the plunge and invest in the machinery, technology and innovation ourselves,” says Greg. “Now our entire range of Wild Bird Energy Food is produced right here at home.” 

And with our own machinery, comes lots more options as well as complete control over quality. We can shape the energy recipe into a range of sizes to suit all types of bird feeders used by New Zealanders, such as the Jumbo Log.

We’ve even developed entirely new ways to feed energy food to wild birds, including Bird Butter and the Bird Butter House, a simple feeding system designed to be fuss-free and low waste. 

New limited edition flavours are also possible now. We collaborated on a cherry flavour with local cherry growers, and made use of discarded blueberry skins left over from the juicing process to develop our popular Blueberry Energy Cakes. This year a limited edition Bug & Berry flavour hit the shelves to the great delight of garden birds all over the country. 

With more and more New Zealanders proudly buying locally-made products, we’re looking forward to finding more innovative ways to support wild birds at home.