With thanks to Sophie Albornett who prepared this for us. Sophie is a 2026 New Zealand Food Communicators Scholarship recipient.

Walking away with three Gold medals at the 2026 Outstanding Food Producers Awards came with a lot of feelings for Mapari Meats owners Richard ‘Rich’ Healey and Geoff Calder. Interestingly, they were surprised. Not that they had won, but that they won with a package put together three hours before the deadline. It’s a testament to their skill, work ethic, and trust – in each other, and their product.

Mapari Meats is one piece of two legacies; Rich and Geoff’s families have been farming in Aotearoa since 1840, with Rich’s family in Taranaki and Whanganui and Geoff’s from Dargaville and Palmerston North. They’ve been friends since they were 12, a brotherhood you can feel after chatting for mere minutes. Rich grew up on a working dairy farm and has worked in butchery across Aotearoa and Australia, while Geoff’s always been in people-facing roles, from working at the front of the butchery shop to working in tourism.

The business was a Covid baby, if you will – after Geoff wrapped up his tourism business and Rich was working as a livestock agent, they threw around different business ideas. After toying with the idea of a liquor store (inspired by Rich’s family history in the industry), they settled on a butchery. After all, it made the most sense.

“Geoff said to me, ‘Why don’t we open a butcher shop? You're a butcher, I'm a salesman, let's go for it.”

The name is their “homage to the land”; Mapari Farm is the Healey family’s farm in the Hinuera Valley, one of the original places they sourced their animals.

Quality control doesn’t begin at the shop counter for Mapari – it starts at the farms, checking the yards, the water quality, and that the animals have a high, clean standard of living. That doesn’t come cheap, but they’re happy if it means fair wages and happy animals; “The animal welfare for us is obviously extremely high and we pay a premium for that, so our farmers get paid well and in return, we get a good product. For us, it's all about farm gate to the plate, so being mindful of what we're buying. We don't want to be commodity traders, we want to be thoughtful in the process.”

Alongside their Grand Reserve Angus Tomahawk and Scotch Fillet, they also took home a Gold medal for their Pork and Paua Sausage. The surf-n-turf idea had been knocking around for a few years, floated by mates Joel Hodgson of @natureskai and NZICC’s former executive chef Rob Cullen. They finally gave it a go, and after three rounds of experimenting, they had it. It’s far from a sausage sizzle snag – Geoff described it as “super rich, almost like wagyu” – best suited to a platter where the bold flavours can shine. It’s not even their most unique sausage (Pork and Pepsi, anyone?), a testament to their innovation that’s earned them walls full of medals from the The Dunninghams Great New Zealand Sausage Competition.

Back to winning those Gold medals. Why was their entry so last minute? After agreeing they’d enter the Outstanding Food Producer awards, they got caught up with work – unsurprising for a pair who used to work 100-hour weeks to get the business off the ground. Fresh off a flight from Hastings, they got a call from business partner Colleen.

Rich - “Colleen rang, and she said, ‘We're going to enter the Food Producer awards, remember? I was like, yeah.

“She goes, ‘Well, the entries close at four o'clock,’ and it was, like, one o'clock. And I was like, shit–”

Geoff - “Let's get some meat together!”

Off to the factory to put together the package, throwing in some of the favourites, and a couple of months later, their first entry to the awards saw them bring home the gold(s). The pair were “happy, really happy,” especially given the calibre of their fellow competitors. Surprised? Not totally; “we weren’t surprised that our product was good,” Rich says.

“We were surprised, to be honest, because we didn't put much time and effort into entering – we thought that we'd actually cocked it up a bit, so we were surprised at that fact. But we do back our product. We know that we make good sausages and things. We were stoked, we were genuinely stoked.”

A hard-working, passionate pair, but a competitive one too. Geoff reminds Rich, “Well, we don’t like losing.”

Visit the Maprai team at their store in Lunn Avenue, Mt Wellington or check them out online.