A very model of diversity

A decade ago, Mervin and Bruce Leach (the sons of founder Harry Gordon) stepped back from their quarrying business and left HG Leach in the hands of Eric Souchon, a civil engineer from South Africa. Their directive was simple  – diversify. Q&M visited the company at its base near Paeroa and caught up with his progress.   BY ALAN TITCHALL

From the head offices of HG Leach you can hear a slight drum of road traffic on the road between Paeroa and Te Aroha, otherwise it’s very quiet. There’s a quaint 80-year old school within a stone’s throw of the main doors that benefits, in a neighbourly way, from company sponsor-ship. The headmaster traditionally turns up at Christmas time with morning tea for the office staff – iced rock cakes of course.

You wouldn’t know that 800 metres into the property there’s a whopping quarry hole slowly being filled with 150,000 tonnes of solid waste very year and not a seagull in sight.

“The Tirohia landfill and quarry site is ideally located 60 metres above ground water and out of sight from the public,” says Souchon. The seagulls were permanently discouraged after the first marauders were unceremoniously shot.

With consent until 2038, the landfill is forming progressively in the worked-out portion of the andesite quarry, and is expected to reach full capacity (four million cubic metres) within 25 years. It is already 40 metres deep.

The 100-year old Tirohia site was purchased in 1952 by Harry Gordon Leach and run by his sons Merv and Bruce Leach into the 1990s. The brothers have three sons between them who are currently involved in the business as directors and divisional managers. Looking at retirement in the 1990s and staying on as major shareholders, Merv and Bruce left a significant investment to diversify business, but they needed the right person for the job.

Eric Souchon arrived here with his Kiwi wife from the US in 1993 and spent three years working as a consulting engineer with local authorities in Auckland.  

“That time was a good grounding in the way New Zealand does business. Previously, I had only worked on large scale large projects,” he says.

He joined Leach in January 1996 with the immediate responsibility of hedging the company’s future by diversifying its interests.

“We saw there was a huge market gap in waste disposal and we had a huge quarry void needing rehabilitation. We had not made adequate provision at the time for a closure plan so it seemed blatantly obvious we could use it for waste.

“We designed and constructed the site ourselves, going through Resource Management process right through the appeals and the High Court, before opening for business in October 2001.”

When he took over, HG Leach was totally reliant on four quarry operations (mostly andesite volcanic rock) that today only make up 40 percent of the company business. Leach diversified into solid waste management (handling and disposal), civil engineering contracting, and transporting aggregate and solid waste. A decade ago Leach had 22 staff in four locations. These days it has 92 staff, 14 different operations at 11 locations, and civil engineering and waste management operations in Fiji.

“I have to credit Merv and Bruce,” Souchon says modestly. It’s one thing to employ a stranger outside management in to run your company another to hand your company over. Their succession plan, coupled by strong support from independent directors on the board, resulted in the growth of the company over these past 10 years. The two are still on the board adding a lot of wisdom and value to what we are doing.”

The Tirohia Landfill disposes of waste collected from the whole Eastern Seaboard and central upper North Island – between the Coromandel Peninsula, Hamilton and Gisborne. At 60 metres above ground water it also features significant containment from the underlying geology and has been engineered with liners that are covered with a sand protection layer and a 300-400mm thick coarse drainage blanket for collection of lechate, which drains out through gravity to a storage and collection pond. The used quarry walls are lined with polyurea  (instead of clay), sprayed directly onto the shotcrete (covered in the August 2006 issue of Q&M by Gavin Riley), saving three cubic metres of air space per square metre of wall liner, says Souchon.

As landfill areas are finished and caped, Leach has installed gas wells (40 metres apart) that are already drawing and flaring 500 cubic metres of natural gas an hour.

Unlike most landfills that are wider than they are deep, Tirohia is very deep with a relatively small footprint that has made gas collection and harnessing available at a very early stage of the landfill. Later this year, Leach is installing gas energy turbines on site.

“We have enough gas to generate one megawatt of power now and within 12-18 months capacity to generate two megawatts. Modelling projects show we can reach up to four megawatts of power by 2030. So, electricity generation is rapidly becoming part of our business.”

Souchon says the gas turbines were not part of the original project plans. “And the project was certainly viable without it. One of the benefits of the power generation is that long after the landfill closes, the site with continue to generate income.”

Leach is responsible for the site until it is completely inert – and that could take up to 30 years after closure, he adds.

For his sins, Souchon has become a stalwart for the industry. He was elected to the national executive of the Aggregate & Quarry Association in 1998 and completed a three-year stint as its president. Last year he was made a fellow of the Institute of Quarrying.

Souchon is also a lone industry voice on the Hauraki Coromandel Regional development board. Local councils are both regulatory bodies for the industry and waste ands aggregate industry clients, he says. “It’s all about working within the communities you are in and the council is just part of our community.”

It’s a far cry in lifestyle and career from days in South Africa when he had a handgun strapped to his waist and was escorted to work by armed guards. Sure, he admits, things move more slowly in New Zealand with endless consent processes and compromises, not usually experienced in places such as South Africa and Australia where national interest are placed foremost. However, the local industry is cohesive and united in pushing the country forward with its much-needed infrastructure, he say.

“I’ve never worked in an industry with such a level of goodwill and strong unified voice and vision.”