The good times keep rolling for Mainfreight and its executive chairman and founding owner Bruce Plested.
After Mainfreight’s solid growth last year it has been even better this time around, posting its best annual result. Net profit rose to $137.6 million, up 28% on the year before, while revenue rose 12.9% to $2.95 billion. Directors put much of the company’s success down to intensifying its global network, which now encompasses Australia, Asia, the Americas and Europe.
In keeping with Mainfreight’s employee-friendly policies, staff will get to share in the result. Over $27 million in bonuses will be paid out, a staggering number that’s up from last year’s already hefty $20.7 million.
Last year, when the company turned 40, he personally wrote to every employee thanking them for their contribution.
Mainfreight has an arguably more liberal bent than many of its competitors – a bent Plested has not shied away from. At the last election he donated heavily to the Maori Party while he spoke out about environmental and social issues in his 2017 annual review.
In last year’s annual report he even took the somewhat unusual step of praising the Labour-led government. “As a business we are pleased with the youthfulness and energy of New Zealand’s new government,” he wrote. “Given the problems they face, we are impressed with the speed at which they are coming to grips, and we wish them well. It is important that they move quickly before they become captured by lobbyists, pressure groups, and the status quo.”
At the company’s annual meeting in July, he referred to the problems of inequality by referring to a film, Capital in the 21st Century, made by Kiwi doco maker Justin Pemberton, based on a critique of capitalism by French economist Thomas Piketty of the same name.
Plested has been with Mainfreight since its 1978 founding. Over the course of the past 41 years he has seen it grow to have more than 7500 employees and branches across the globe. From 96c on its 1996 listing, Mainfreight’s share price has risen steadily, finishing at over $40 in early August. Plested himself holds a 15.9% share in the company.
He enjoys fishing and conservation work at his $23 million, 130ha Rorohara estate on Waiheke Island in his spare time.
2018: $500 million