Meet the Team

Richard, his wife Vanessa and their 2 teenage children, live on 30 acres in the Hunua ranges, farming Coopworth X sheep.

With shearing machinery in his blood, Richard's career started nearly 30 years ago with an engineering background in the family business, manufacturing sheep shearing machines and components.

In 1992, the opportunity came up to travel to the USA with Alan & Nancy Barker. Alan taught for the NZ Wool Board for many years and travelled a number of times to the USA to take shearing courses. Journeying half way around the world to learn to shear seems like madness for a New Zealander but Alan was an amazing instructor and stood Richard in good stead for a flourishing shearing career in New Zealand with local contractor Mike Embling and then on to several seasons in the UK.

As a competition shearer, Rich shore right through the grades until re-entering the family business in his late 20's and now leads our team of 12 in all aspects of the business. In 2005, Richard worked intensely on changes to the design of shearing machines and won Innovation awards for his implementation of the first types of safety cut-out systems which we now see in all modern shearing machines.

Richard is a shearing judge and is closely involved in the competition circuit; installing & overseeing the Lister competition machines, as well as judging and operating the scoring/timing system. He travelled to Ireland as part of the Shearing Timing & Scoring team for the World Shearing Champs in 2014 and was again part of the team for the World Champs in Invercargill in 2017.

In his spare time, he loves to farm, fish, watch the odd rugby game or two and is a Certified Diver who loves a good shark encounter (apparently there is such a thing!!).

And as we are keeping it in the family, Richard's wife Vanessa also works in Acto's apparel division, she specialises in making shearing moccasins and shearing accessories as well as Fagan shearing jeans.

Richard and Vanessa's son Jaden has also been to his fair share of shearing competitions from a very young age, helping either Dad or Grandad. In 2017 Jaden was an integral part of the Shearing Timing & Scoring Team for the World Shearing Champs in Invercargill.