Unimogs and helicopters called in to deliver essential grocery items to isolated supermarkets

Unimogs and helicopters have been tasked with dropping off essential grocery items to those in cyclone-affected areas.

Foodstuffs North Island chief executive Chris Quin said replenishing isolated communities was the focus on Thursday.

”In the past 24 hours our team has made significant progress getting essentials to isolated communities and reopening and replenishing our stores where we can make deliveries.

“The biggest hurdle for us remains the roads. To get stock through in the past 24 hours we’ve used back roads, Unimogs, and we’ve contracted a helicopter that can lift two to three ton to get essentials like toilet paper and water into stores that cannot yet get a delivery by road.”

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It was using its Hastings depot as a staging point with the helicopter, which was helping to shift up to 40 pallets of stock and technology, such as Starlink kits for connecting to the internet, into the communities of Wairoa, Tokomaru Bay, Tologa Bay and Ruatoria.

All its Pak ‘n Save stores were open, while just one New World, New World Onekawa in Napier, was closed.

“Today, we hope to gain road access to Onekawa in order to move a generator through to enable the store to reopen. We have seven Four Squares not yet able to open, all in the Hawke’s Bay.”

Queues wrapped around New World Greenmeadows on Thursday morning as residents tried to replenish their food, leaving shelves bare.

Foodstuffs had donated $260,000 worth of food and goods and yesterday provided about $50,000 to Hawke’s Bay community partners.

Meanwhile, Countdown was donating $200,000 cash to help those affected by the cyclone.

The money will go to organisations providing on-the-ground assistance and support to communities. The chain will also provide water and other essentials to evacuation centres providing shelter to families who have been displaced.

Overnight, Countdown’s supply chain team had got essential deliveries on the road to areas that had been cut off.

This meant it was able to open its Gisborne store and hoped to open its Napier store at 1pm. Countdown Carlyle remained closed.

Countdown managing director Spencer Sonn said the supermarket’s priority had been getting critical supplies to those people most impacted by road closures for the last few days and now the business was beginning to turn its mind to what recovery would look like for its team, supply partners and communities.

“We’re deeply grateful to our incredible team who continue to do everything they can to get food where it needs to go and make sure Kiwis have the essentials they need.”