Succeed With Simplicity – Our Interview With Comvita CEO, David Banfield

After a globe-trotting career around the world, David Banfield landed in New Zealand in 2014 as the Group CEO for NZX-listed Methven. In January of 2020 he took the helm at Comvita, an iconic New Zealand honey brand founded in 1974 to connect people to health and nature. This approach has never gone out of style, and as people around the world have become more aware of the natural health benefits of honey, Comvita has attained significant global success.

We talked to Banfield about taking on responsibility for such an iconic company, what it takes to be a leader, and his core philosophies on what it takes to create positive change.

If we go back to 1974, there was this very simple mantra of connecting nature with healthcare and the dream of two beekeepers, is that still something that is in your mind today?

Oh, totally. I think it’s that magic of the story that we’re trying to connect people to. I often talk about the irony of our turnaround and transformation of performance, that it’s actually connecting back to that founding story and that belief system that was there; not just in product but in the way the business thought about our impact on the environment.

It’s pretty unusual that at the time our two co-founders had a big age gap. Alan was 27, Claude was 67. But they came together and formed an incredible bond and mutual respect which set us on the way to what we are today.

It seems an odd pairing for a business partnership that would form the foundation for something that is now 50 years old. Have you thought about what it was in that partnership?

Fundamentally, they both shared a belief that nature had the answers to most of the world’s problems. Claude had been recognised as someone you turned to when traditional medicine didn’t work and he had his flock that relied on him.

I think Alan at the same time was going on his own journey of discovery and, without the two different perspectives, we wouldn’t be what we are, really. It’s the sum of the parts that created it.
I do often think about how we talk about being born generations apart. I think it would be different today – the worldliness of a 67-year-old then, compared to the relative youth of a 67-year-old today.

They seemed very ahead of their time because back then, we weren’t so worried about the health benefits of nature.

You’re right. If you think about some of the principles around the environment, how many companies back in the seventies were thinking about their footprint and how many companies were really thinking about how they engaged in their local communities?

It’s those things that I find really special and in it all, you have the magic of the bee, that’s a story that’s got to be told.

People are now far more conscious of the social and environmental impact they have. At the same time, we’re all very conscious of our own health vulnerability as well. So it’s interesting to go back and look at the blueprint of the business which really connected to stuff that is at the forefront now.

I think that’s why I personally feel really privileged to lead the organisation through this period because, we’re 46 years old now, but it’s a chapter that we will turn 50 in.

The ability to connect to those founding principles, which are probably more relevant than ever right now. It’s a responsibility, but it’s an opportunity to do something really special.

While it must be special, you must have had a particularly challenging time as well. How have you juggled that?

It’s a combination of things. The interim result before I joined was a $13 million loss, after a $27.7 million loss the summer before that. Then you had the pandemic just starting, and the challenge of wanting to take the organisation on a journey of transformation, trying to reconnect with consumers, when you’re not able to physically support that.

I was lucky to get around to a number of our key markets in the couple of months before [the pandemic]. I got over to China, Australia and went up to the U.S., so there was some time, but I definitely had an added urgency to make sure that we made the right decisions early.

It is about setting the long-term foundations in place for success at Comvita and I take that responsibility really seriously. But at the same time, I feel really privileged that I have the opportunity to do that.

Do you think, in some kind of perverse way, that some of what we’ve been going through in terms of having to find other ways of connecting with our consumers, might’ve actually helped speed up some things that needed to happen?

Probably not. I think the reality of Comvita as a business that was losing money, was slow to act, had become complicated and disconnected, I think that was the overriding thing. From the start, I had a really clear view of the things that needed to change to enable that change to happen.

The environmental circumstances probably allowed us to express the type of business that we wanted to become and really make sure that our core principles of ‘we’re in it together’ and health and safety are right at the top of our list.

There were some deep held beliefs that were embodied in actions that we took over that period of time that I think have probably helped to anchor the organisation – so it wasn’t change for the sake of change.

When I talk about performance culture, it is definitely a combination of those two words. It’s the performance that we need, but it’s the culture that we want to create within the organisation that ensures we’re aligned to who we are as a business, and particularly who we were back in the seventies and eighties.

We showed on a number of things that we would be decisive, but we also tried to do it in the right way as we went through.

When you come in and take the reins, you’ve got a real sense of some of the changes that you need to make. Was that a process to undo certain things?

Yeah, it was and is. I think it’s one that you need to be able to deliver in a certain way, and I’m sort of a whites-of-the-eye type person. It’s not something that we do from a distance, it’s something that we do in a way that I think respects individuals.

When we’re making changes, it’s not necessarily an indictment of an individual’s capability, but it’s quite often that the role that that person had wasn’t right for us going forward.

Personally, it was encouraging when even people whose roles were being affected were supportive of the changes we were making. They wanted Comvita to be back to where it should be.

I think there’s a stylistic thing there and I also think that the leadership team as a whole have led in that way; there are people who care about the decisions that we make and the impacts that we have. We’ve got a good balance between the decisions that we make, but also how we do that, regardless of how tough some of those decisions are.

In terms of that future direction, did you have to spend some time with the vision and where you wanted to go before you went back to the rest of the team and used that as the basis to make the changes you needed to make?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it probably started before I even came into the business. I think that the Board were looking for someone to lead that transformative process. It helped that we were really clear about the responsibility once I actually joined the business.

Normally, we would go through a typical 90-day plan to learn, to test assumptions and then to implement those assumptions once they’ve been validated, but obviously with the impact of COVID-19, that 90 days had to be condensed quite significantly. It meant that the leadership team and I had to really get to the pulse of the organisation quite quickly, but also be taking action.
One of my personal core philosophies is, it’s better to act your way to a new way of thinking, than think your way to a new way of acting. It’s about an action focus, testing and learning, and not being afraid of making a mistake on the way through.

As long as we learn from it, those are things that, for the right people, can be really empowering because the emphasis is on acting our way to what we want to become.

That takes place across a whole load of levels. We’ve redefined our purpose, we’ve redefined our values and behaviours, we’ve redefined our five-year plan and communicated some elements of that, we’ve reconnected with markets, we’ve reconnected with consumers.

There is still a long way to go, but that’s the only reason we have the business model that we do, and we have to make sure that we bring in great people or tap into the great people that we’ve already got in the organisation, so they’re able to use their brains and capability.

Without that action focus, there was a lot of talking about things, but the traction part wasn’t as immediate and it did manifest itself. If you look over the first 12 months, every single month, we were profitable. We’ve transitioned away from a position of difficulty, of challenge.

One of the first words I learned when I used to work in Germany was “einfach”, which means simple. That’s a core belief that if you really create an environment that is simple, that gives you the chance to succeed and creates the space for success, then it just brings energy to the organisation as well. When you’ve got all these complex ways of working to do otherwise simple things, it saps energy. That can be quite soul destroying.

To get to 12 consecutive profitable months, and the interims we’ve just reported, shows that already on our five-year journey, we’ve done a fair bit. But there’s still a fair bit to do as well.

Can you share with us your redefined purpose and some of the values that are associated with that as well?

That was a really vital part, because a few years ago there was a concern, probably in 2016/2017, that the supply would be constrained and therefore we needed to proliferate and go into various new product categories.

I think that took us away from our core strength around bees. What we wanted to capture within our redefined purpose was various elements that came back to who we are, where we operate, and then obviously how we win.

Our purpose is working in harmony with bees and nature in New Zealand to heal and protect the world and the combination of things there. It really is about the core principles of Kaitiakitanga, of the type of guardianship we want to bring for both flora and fauna in New Zealand. That was really important for us.

We actually still have a joint venture offshore in Australia with a beekeeping operation and that’s not really who we are. Our land is New Zealand. That will continue for a period of time and our connection with bees and nature should be here.

The idea of healing and protecting the world really talks to the ultimate opportunity with Mānuka and whilst we can’t talk to consumers about science too much because we’re classified as a food product, we underpin our knowledge of Mānuka with probably the world’s most advanced science honey laboratory. One of the reasons I put our Chief Science Officer back at the leadership table is to make sure that we’re grounded in the real benefit that we bring and the efficacy that exists.

With the values, again, one of my observations was that we were, and are, the global leader in Mānuka honey and I believe that leaders lead. I understand when performance isn’t there and you’re posting results that are disappointing or poor, then some of the leadership bit can disappear and you become risk averse. When that happens, typically you stop doing the very things that put you in the position that you are.

When we came to values, the first value was one of, ‘we all lead’, and that’s irrespective of position. That’s an expectation that leaders lead.

The second one was about ‘we love to learn’, but I didn’t really see that in the organisation. The sort of curiosity should mean we open our mind to possibilities and we’re not frightened by things that we don’t know. Instead we actually look at those instances as a learning opportunity and we think about what that actually means, personally and collectively.

The third is about togetherness, and again, this really did come through during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns. We were part of the global solution where consumers were talking to us. We had our production team who operated throughout and went over and above to keep supply. The team went down to four days a week when we needed to conserve cash. There was this collectivism that came out of that, that I think was magical.

The final value is about Kaitiakitanga, the belief that good organisations think about their total impact. We’re trying to create that right now, the business doughnut economics version, and I think we’re doing some really very interesting work in that space to redefine what good looks like there.

When you’re talking about the purpose and really defining that, how important is it to get down to that point where you’ve got a couple of sentences that shape how you’re going to go?

I think it’s really vital and I think that we want people to join our crusade. This goes back to what I saw, particularly from Comvita’s co-founder Alan. Alan was part of a social movement back at that time and we think our movement now is probably even more important, making sure that not only do we operate in the right way, but that we think about all those impacts.

We look at ways that we can be a better company, an aspirational company and the more we stay true to who we are, the more people will come and join that movement. I think that there’s a responsibility with that, but it’s actually a really great opportunity that exists to deliver that.

Can you also talk a little bit more about this concept of acting your way into a different or new mindset?

I think the best example is when we think about the type of organisation we want to be. You can sit and pontificate about some of those decisions that we make, but we’ve just tried to be really clear about what that actually means in reality.

We’re a living wage employer, and even during those first months, we said, ‘This is important for us.’ This is a statement of intent and it goes right back to who we are and what we do.

We’re planting probably just over two million trees a year and within that, we want to make sure that the carbon credits that come from that, we can use as a force for good as well. We’ve changed the agreements there to ensure that we get that.

In terms of some of the activity in marketplace, we’ve got a couple of hundred people in China, and if we want to attract and retain the best talent, we’ve got to give them the ability to act. I think we’ve done a lot to achieve that and it’s probably evidenced in the interim results.

China sales were up 20% in the six months to the end of December. That’s a great space when you bring talent in and that they equally have the license to act.

Two million trees is a lot of trees. Where are you planting and what’s happening? How does that work?

Mānuka is a native bush. It’s a bush that actually allows other species to flourish beneath it. We’re planting farmland, remote land that traditionally was either sheep or cattle. Some of the benefits of turning that back into Mānuka forests are that we fix erosion, we fix waterways, we bring back other foundling species.

The benefits that we bring through that are just as significant in other areas and actually one of our forests now has a population of Kiwi living back in it. It’s all about the environment that we create, allowing nature and natural species to thrive.

Are you optimistic about some of the environmental challenges that we have to go up against in this country, when you’ve got a scenario with this really strong commercial viability in turning pastoral land back into native forests?

I think that movement is actually in transition. It is moving. I think there’s an expectation that it’s not all about returns.

We’ve got lots of different stakeholders and I think good companies are the companies that think about the team, think about the land, think about our shareholders as a whole – and ensure one hasn’t got priority over the others. We believe that the best interests of our shareholders are served when we also serve the best interest of our team and the land that we’re on.

It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s back to my point before about leaders leading and I think we, Comvita, have a responsibility to lead into that new direction and I believe that we’ll reap the rewards on a many levels for that approach.

Do you think the way that leaders are leading is evolving? We’re seeing a lot more sensitivity and compassion and kindness in leaders these days, is that something that you’ve noticed from your perspective?

Yeah, totally. I think that the old ‘command and control’ style is a thing of the past. I think that actually within a digital sense, you’re not constrained by where you live.

There’s more freedom to choose the type of organisation you want to work in and the type of leader that you want to work with as well.

I think there’s never been more emphasis on leading in the right way and it is that combination of performance and culture that leaders need to bring.

How do you strike that balance between the compassion and the performance?

My first day at Comvita was a really moving day. There was a pōwhiri to start the day and the team welcomed me into the whānau. When I first spoke I said, “This is a special chapter for Comvita.”

As I said earlier, it’s a chapter to where we turn 50 years of age. It’s a chapter that we write together and it’s not a ‘Banfield’ chapter. We invite people to show how everyone can contribute to the success and to the great things that we will achieve over this period.

I think good people respond to that type of message. There are people that may say, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ but the good people say, ‘This is something that is worthy and something we want to be part of.’ We’ve got to create the environment to enable them to excel. It’s all about how we act.

At the end of the day, we have to deliver because the only way that we’ll create the type of future for Comvita that we want is if we deliver. But as we do, we can improve training and development conditions of the physical environment that we work in and all of those things will benefit the team as well.

If we were to look at it like a Banfield chapter though, what do you think led you here?

I never expected to end up in New Zealand, let alone in Tauranga. We came here as a family in 2011 to do a tour and then I came back to supposedly watch England win the Rugby World Cup, which didn’t happen [laughs]. We really enjoyed our visit here in 2011, but didn’t really think that it would be a place that we would live.

Then, out of nowhere, in 2013, I got a call to say that there was a company that needed a turnround and would I be interested in considering it. Honestly, the more I saw, the more I liked. I thought that was a really exciting opportunity.

We moved here in January 2014 to start that journey with Methven. That was a brilliant chapter, we sold Methven to an Australian company in 2019, but the transformation of the organisation was really meaningful over that period of time.

Then I looked at what the next chapter was for me. I do like that transformation turnaround space. I want that global reach, I’ve spent my life in markets around the world.

I wanted to ensure that it was an organisation where ultimately I could facilitate it becoming the type of organisation that, at the end of the day, made my parents and my family proud.

Comvita had just announced the previous CEO was leaving and I reached out to him and said, ‘I think I’m the person that should join and lead Comvita through this next stage,’ and the rest is history.

Is there something in your psychology that draws you towards those transformational changes?

I think that when you see capability and you see that, for whatever reason, capability hasn’t been able to flourish, then there’s something within me that just feels that with a lot of hard work, a lot of hours and the right people, it’s a wonderful opportunity to let something flourish.

Like Richard Branson always used to say, “If you’re not on the edge, you’re taking up too much room,” and I really like that as a principle. I’m not afraid to try things and fail.

I think it’s one that when you enter into that space, it’s a learning thing but we’ll manage risk and all of those things you’d expect.

I think that when you then get a group of people around you who are as equally as committed as you are to that transformative journey, then that’s a great basis.

When you’re going into these scenarios and you’re seeing this potential that has been constructed in a way, is it often the complexity that somehow builds up in businesses?

I think that’s certainly a part of it. There’s two things that I would keep coming back to. The first one is about focus or ‘fokus’ in German, which is quite easy to remember and the second one is ‘einfach’, that simple part.

I think it’s really easy to lose sight of who those stakeholders are and how we connect with consumers. We add extra processes in for whatever reason at the time and when that makes you slow and complex, it doesn’t help anyone.

I think those two things of focus and simplicity are right at the centre of my thinking and the German organisation that I spent a long time in, if I heard ‘fokus’ once a day, I heard it 20 times a day.

German family-owned businesses are brilliant because they have that focus and they see speciality as being a gift, rather than an encumbrance.

When I look at Mānuka, I look at the global opportunity and just think, ‘Blimey, just look how far we can go when we get those things right’.

Just going back to your success globally, what has been behind that, apart from your leadership, of course?

[Laughs] The only thing that I’ve done is brought some brilliant people in to help us there. If I look at our in-market team, we’ve got a regional CEO who is extremely talented, we’ve got a new CFO in-market, they both started in June; a Chief Marketing Officer started in July; People and Transformation Officer started in August; GM for Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan started in September.

We’re bringing brains and capability to the table and then we’ve got to just make sure that we give them the space to act. In Paengaroa, where our office is, we changed the name from the head office to the market support centre and psychologically that’s really important.

If you say, ‘We win in the market because we should be better connected, we should be faster to act’ and Paengaroa is there to facilitate that.

Do you think that part of this global megatrend analysis is that people are more focused or more conscious about their health? Does that help?

It does, but it’s longer-term trends that people are turning to nature and natural products to solve world problems. That can be in a practical way, what we put into our bodies and onto our skin, but actually it can also be about the way you act around the world.

I think there’s way more visibility of those things that are happening and I think that that’s here to stay. The transparency really is crucial because, you can’t make stuff up and say one thing and do something else. I think that transparency works for us.

As well as the global markets, New Zealand is still an important market for you, right?

I think it’s really important that we win at home. It’s not necessarily about the revenue that we generate from New Zealand because it isn’t going to be material to what we do around the world, but I do think it’s important that you win in your home market and that you can puff your chest out at home.

I go back to a story in the UK, the retailer Marks and Spencer used to measure staff engagement by the number of people who were wearing their uniform on the bus on the way home from work and wearing it proudly. When times were tough, people used to put coats on to cover up.

For Comvita, I honestly believe our story is amazing. I want to share that story, share the story of our founders Alan and Claude, connect people back to nature, get people to think more about the impact that we have on the environment and the choices that we can make.

Our new experience centre, the Wellness Lab, that’s opening in Auckland, is the start of a journey to tell that story. We want to connect with communities, we want to connect with schools and we want to help people understand the magic of our bees and the magic of the environment that is here.

It’s really exciting to open that. It’s not about selling stuff, it’s actually about connection and telling that story in a way that I hope people will love.

What’s the plan for it? What goes into that experience?

We’ll tell the story of Comvita clearly, but more importantly, we’ll tell the story of nature. We’ll tell the story of how bees create Mānuka. We’ll talk about different types of honey that come from New Zealand.

You’ve got a 180-degree immersive cinema-type environment where there’s a space that enables you to really connect to our land. Hopefully that enables people to understand a bit more about the magic of the bees and the land that we call Aotearoa.

You’re obviously invested in the physical connection with your customers with retail, but now a lot has changed, especially in an age of Zoom.

I think that retail has to transform. It’s not just about picking product off the shelf anymore. If you want to get a jar of honey, you can do that online and have it delivered to your house pretty quickly. I think that retail has to transform to become a place where you’re able to engage with a brand or a community or a movement in a way that probably removes you from the day-to-day and transports you to a place where you really do imagine and connect.

What are you going to do on a Sunday afternoon for your own entertainment or your own engagement? You’re going to spend an hour at the Wellness Lab and reconnect with nature as part of it. There’s so much different technical capability that you can bring to that space. I hope it’s a space that people love being part of and they come away from it understanding a little bit more as well, particularly a bit more of the Comvita story.

I’m no UMF ratings expert, but a 25+ seems like a really big deal. Can you talk about the process behind the development of the Special Reserve and what your future is?

We wanted to do two things. We wanted to celebrate our beekeeping capability, and we wanted to celebrate what the land actually gives us – in that we’re able to produce a high UMF, high strength Mānuka.

That is incredibly rare. There’s only certain quantities that are available around the world and the product really helps us tell Comvita’s story about the purity of our process – firstly, that we’re able to extract it and in the way that we want to use it, to connect to discerning consumers around the world who want the best for themselves.

We do that in a way which enables people to connect with the whole story about our beliefs around Kaitiakitanga, and the environmental footprint that we have. I think the embodiment of that means that as people experience the product, they’ll see the story unfold firsthand.

Within the ‘honey world’, is that level of extraction quite unique?

It’s the most potent monofloral Mānuka that we’ve produced in recent years, which is why we’re so excited to share it and launch it as we open our new experience centre.

We’ve also created a virtual experience to support the launch of the product, and our newly-launched OneHive movement allows people to join us on our mission to do good. We’ll be using some of the proceeds of the UMF25+ launch to support various environmental diversity projects around the world via OneHive, and create further good as well.

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