David Henry (businessman)
| Sir David Henry | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
24 November 1888 Juniper Green, Midlothian, Scotland |
| Died | 20 August 1963 (aged 74) Auckland, New Zealand |
| Occupation | Industrialist |
Sir David Henry, KBE (24 November 1888 – 20 August 1963) was a Scottish-born New Zealand industrialist, company director, and philanthropist.
Henry was born at Juniper Green, Midlothian, Scotland. His father, Robert Henry, was a sawmiller and on leaving school, David worked as a clerk in the Mossy Paper Mill at Colinton while attending night classes in Edinburgh, possibly at Heriot-Watt College.
Indifferent health prompted him to emigrate to New Zealand in 1907. He worked for the Government Printer in Wellington for a brief time before moving to Christchurch, where he founded an engineering business. When the business failed he shifted to Auckland to start afresh.
He married Mary Castleton Osborne on 28 April 1915 and began working for another engineering and patents company owned by S. Oldfield and D. B. Hutton. By August of the same year, he had bought into the firm, and it was renamed Oldfield & Henry. Within four years he owned the organisation outright and it became known as D. Henry & Co. Henry expanded the business into a profitable small-scale plumbing manufacturer and supplier.
Henry's New Zealand cousins (see Henry family) had been involved in the fledgingly timbermilling industry since their arrival in New Zealand in the 1870s and in 1936 he was to play a pivotal role in the consolidation of the New Zealand timber industry through his involvement in the merger of his extended family's milling business with the afforestation company, New Zealand Perpetual Forests (a large bond selling company that had established 150,000 acres (61,000 ha) of timber plantations, but had gone bankrupt). Henry struck a hard bargain in purchasing the New Zealand Perpetual Forests assets and was made the chairman and managing director of the new company for his efforts. This new company was New Zealand Forest Products, which remained New Zealand's largest industrial concern and largest company until the privatisation of Telecom New Zealand in the 1990s.
In assuming the role of New Zealand's pre-eminent industrialist, Henry was concerned with developing the future utilisation of the company's forests. Sawmill technology for handling Pinus radiata, and the commercial manufacture of pulp and paper from this species, was reasonably undeveloped worldwide. He travelled extensively throughout the United States and Europe to find the newest processing technology and fought a protracted battle with the New Zealand Government to overcome bureaucracy.
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