The Heller family tradition of butcheries began when Gorg Heller emigrated from Germany to New Zealand during the gold rush of the 1880’s and started supplying the gold miners with smallgoods from a small shop in Arrowtown. Todd Heller continued the long line of butchers by opening his first butchery in New Brighton, Christchurch, in 1985. Todd began offering greater variety and new flavours – very little of which were available at the time. His customers responded well. Todd Heller Meats started supplying supermarkets and moved to a new plant at Kaiapoi and began supplying throughout the South Island. The company continued to flourish and after merging with Tasty Bacon became Heller Tasty Limited. The purchase of Vienna Sensational Foods gave the company national distribution and in 2002, Heller’s Sensational London Pride sausage was judged New Zealand’s best. In 2008, Hellers won the Supreme Sausage award with Hellers Cheese Kransky and the 100% NZ Bacon of the year award with Hellers Middle Eye bacon. In May 2011 Hellers launched its Free Farmed Bacon and in the 100% NZ bacon awards of the same year won gold with its Middle Eye and silver with Middle and Ribeye Bacon. Today over 400 staff can produce up to 350 tonnes of sausages in 80 different varieties a week along with bacon, ham and other service deli smallgoods. Manufacturing and technical excellence Our modern plants have kept pace with technology without compromising the traditional values and standards of quality upon which our reputation has been founded. The strictest health and quality guidelines are applied to all our processes and only the very best ingredients are acceptable. Hellers is always ready to embrace new technology in order to keep ahead with product innovation and consumer appeal. Our research and development programmes continue to meet and exceed the requirements of our customers in supermarket and food service markets.