Dame Bronwen and Dr Peter Holdsworth Family Fund

Renowned as an innovative engineer and inventor, Peter began experimenting with pultrusion technology in his farm workshop near Te Karaka in 1981 while looking for a lighter, stronger alternative for wind turbine blades. He applied the technology to electric fence posts and clips, transforming the New Zealand fencing market and breaking into the global market.

Further innovation saw Peter’s pultrusion technology used for sail battens, optic fibre cables, mining rockbolts, ladder rails, snowmobile tracks, and pontoons - to name but a few of the many products. Pultron was also the development partner and exclusive supplier to high-tensile springs for the ‘SpringFree’ trampoline, a revolutionary design which eliminated 80% of trampoline accidents, becoming an international success.

Dame Bronwen was educated in Wellington at Samuel Marsden College (where in 2007 she was the inaugural laureate in the Marsden Hall of Fame) and at Victoria University. In 1966 she joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was posted to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 1970 she married Peter and moved to Gisborne. They have four children, all highly educated, who live and work around the world.

She was MORE Business Woman of the Year in 1988; was awarded a NZ Commemoration Medal in 1990; an ONZM in 1997; a Gisborne Millennium Medal in 2000; and was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2015 for contribution to the arts, business and community.