About us | Cedenco Foods New Zealand

From your favourite drink to your most loved snack, Cedenco ingredients are used by some of the world's most iconic food and beverage brands.

We’ve had roots in the East Coast of New Zealand since we formed in 1986. With around 150 permanent and 700 seasonal staff, we’re proud to play an integral role in our local community and economy.

Our natural environment provides the perfect conditions to grow a wide variety of healthy produce. Our passion for food safety are underpinned by our community of growers committed to the highest sustainable farming practices.

Good food from the hands of good people

We deliver solutions for our customers while remaining true to our core value of Kaitiaki (care for people, place and planet for future generations). We have a spirit of ingenuity as we search for better ways to do things and our mission is to inspire our employees to be the best they can be while staying obsessively focused on delivering value for our customers.

Our Social and Environmental Responsibility

We are committed to reducing our environmental impact. Our farmers are compliant to the Sustainable Agriculture Code (SAC) and we’re involved in a number of agricultural programmes to assist improving our farming performance
It is our duty of care to our people, contractors and visitors to provide a safe and healthy work environment. Continuous health, safety and wellbeing improvement is an integral part of everything we do
Social responsibility is deeply ingrained in our culture we consider this as mandatory to operating our business. Cedenco is a member of SEDEX, the world’s leading ethical trade service providers, working to improve working conditions in global supply chains

Our History

Hunter Witters was a grower of sweetcorn from the late 1940s, and a key influencer behind the establishment of J Wattie’s Canneries in Gisborne. He was one of the first growers to supply the new Wattie’s factory, which opened on February 2 1952. Hunter passed his operation down to his sons Cedric and Dean Witters who brought what was innovation at the time to the industry with improvements such as leasing instead of buying land and introducing single cell transplants. In 1976 after organising a grower’s tour of the USA, they imported their first machine harvester.

Already a successful tomato grower, the Witters brothers began leasing land and expanding their tomato growing enterprise.

In 1985 they formed Cedenco — an amalgamation of the names Cedric and Dean — Dean had studied horticulture at Massey University and organised the first huge field operation. Cedric, a commerce graduate, focused on building the factory from scratch in the industrial subdivision. The tomato paste and puree factory was commissioned in January 1986. Tomato paste production grew to 14,000 tonnes within 10 years and Cedenco later expanded into bulk diced tomatoes, apple and kiwifruit paste, kiwifruit and sweetcorn and pumpkin powder with it’s drum dried powder plant.

A consortium of local businessmen bought Cedenco in 1991 and in late 1993 listed on the stock exchange. An “idea-a-minute “ man, Dean thrived on the adrenaline of the growing business as it forged into Asia, Middle East, China and Australia. His drive and passion spread to the team and in 1992 they won a TradeNZ/ Air NZ Governor General’s Export Award for Exporter of the Year. In 1994, Dean won a Massey University Sir Geoffrey Peren Distinguished Alumni Award for innovation in horticultural production and export, and outstanding contribution to the East Coast region.

In 2001 Cedenco expanded into frozen vegetable processing with the purchase of freezing equipment for the production of Frozen Peas, Corn and Pumpkin.

From 2000, performance at Cedenco improved dramatically and in May 2001 it was bought by American food processor SK Foods and Dean stood down as Managing Director.

In 2010, ownership changed to Imanaka holdings Ltd. a Japanese Food Ingredients trading company.

In 2017 Cedenco expanded its operations with the acquisition of apple processor ENZA Foods as well as establishing dairy and seafood operations though Cedenco Dairy and Cedenco Aquaculture.

In 2018, Cedenco was again recognised for it’s contribution to exports winning the ExportNZ Exporter of the year for the Hawkes Bay region as well as being a finalist in the New Zealand International business awards.