John Brooks Founders Story - 60th Anniversary Edition

John Brooks - The Grower

The story begins in the early 1930s in New Zealand with a young boy with an entrepreneurial mindset picking fruit and veg and riding his bike around the neighbourhood selling them. Tomatoes, potatoes, apricots, plums. Picked packaged and Delivered.

​John Brooks - The Engineer

Fast forward 20 years, the young boy is now a man, an engineer in the Merchant Navy. Even there he was finding ways to make more money. He started A Bob A Nob, giving his team haircuts before they got back to shore. His ability to identify a need and add value was a talent.

After the Merchant Navy, John worked for an engineering business which gave him a real taste of how things should not be done.

John Brooks - The Restaurateur

He quickly moved on to his next venture, he opened his first proper business - a fish and chip restaurant in 1954. With the combination of experiences learnt he decided to put everything on the table and risk it all for something he believed would change his life. He mortgaged everything - including the knives and forks - bought a van, an A30 Austin to be precise, and John Brooks Ltd was born. He started by taking orders and selling products with prompt delivery. He understood the demand and valued efficiency, no matter what the customer would always get their product as quickly as possible.

​After years of building his reputation, John Brooks got an office space in a crushing plant and started employing designers and Sales Reps. He saw an opportunity to use the products at hand to provide better custom solutions for his customers and with that he expanded the John Brooks offering.

John Brooks the Legacy Brand

Now, John Brooks is in 3 locations and services Nationwide providing custom industrial automation solutions to a wide range of industries (inc. distribution, agriculture, winemaking, manufacturing), John’s ethos of work hard, provide the best service and always help your customers has been handed down through 3 generations and today John Brooks is the leading name in the Industrial Automation space.