Craig and Penny Hickson founded Progressive Meats in 1981 and the pair are still the sole owners of the Hastings company that started with six employees and now has more than 300.
The company has processing facilities for lamb, beef and venison. It specialises in preparing red meat for export.
Hickson has a background in science, including a food technology degree majoring in engineering but his forte is in process design – creating efficiencies in the way a product is processed.
Hickson says the key to the success of the business has been specialisation. The company doesn't own its own trucks or rendering plants, which enables it to focus on processing.
As well as being an astute agribusinessman, Hickson has two university degrees, one in food technology from Massey University, and a BA in economics and marketing from Victoria.
He started in the meat industry in 1969 as a student, working at the Hawke's Bay Farmers Meat Company, before joining the NZ Meat Producers Board in Wellington in 1975, which he left in 1980 to start Progressive Meats.
That journey resulted in him winning the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in New Zealand in 2015.
2018: $75 million