It has been a long road for this New Zealand family. In 2012, its company, which built many New Zealand motorways, celebrates its centenary.

The Stevenson Group consists of five separate operating companies with the Stevenson name linked to engineering, construction materials (including the recently-named Stevenson concrete), agriculture, resources, mining and properties.

The company employs 500 in New Zealand, with a small office in Australia.

It recently launched literacy and numeracy programmes for them, finding this boosts their communication skills, productivity and lowers staff turnover.

Quarrying forms a major part of operations, with it having three quarries, including New Zealand’s largest at Drury, which supplies around one quarter of Auckland’s aggregate needs with an estimated economic benefit of about $40-$50 million a year.

It also owns the 14,000ha Lochinver Station southeast of Taupo which runs 1000 Angus breeding cows as well as 25,000 Perendales, which produce more than 165,000kg of wool a year.

Stevenson Group has a history of road-building, such as constructing Auckland’s Southern motorway, and recently widening some of it to dual-four lanes, and building the SH1 ALPURT motorways extension to Orewa.

It has other major development plans at hand, with it pushing for development of 360ha, sited between its Drury Quarry and the Southern Motorway. Facing some local opposition, the Drury South project is working its way through the consents process.