It took a late-night knock from former chief executive Craig Wilson – spare ticket in hand, gentle insistence in voice – to get him there.

Only a handful of people in the room knew he would be called: Wilson, Rotorua Business Chamber chief executive Melanie Short and the awards engraver.

“I’ve got a slow heart rate … 58 to 60 [beats per minute] … well, I had a one in front of it,” Wells said of the moment his name was called for the award.

With no prepared speech, Wells stepped on to the stage and spoke off the cuff, reflecting on more than five decades in business and his genuine love for “creating” – products people valued, jobs that lasted, and a company strong enough to hand on while it was still thriving.

A twist of fate

Gardening, cooking and fishing rods all spring from the same impulse for Wells: making things.

Much of the wooden furniture in his home is hand-crafted, and even the house itself was a personal project.

Fittingly, even the house carried his past.

When Wells and his late wife Helen bought the property in 2009, the old stucco house on the site was “leaking”, “rotten” and bound for demolition. Three years later, as the “mess” came down, he noticed something beneath the stairway plaster.

Pressed against the underside of a 20-25mm concrete slab was a page of the Rotorua Daily Post from June 1939.

Builders in the 1930s had laid newspapers before pouring concrete, and this one had survived.

The faded clipping advertised free golf balls with a purchase and school raincoats on special, both promoting his father’s business, Rotorua Sports Depot, on the corner of Fenton and Hinemoa Sts.

The original fragment of concrete now lived in Wells’ garage, a small time capsule showing his family and the business that became the Kilwell Group had been woven through Rotorua’s story for nearly a century.

A business built to last

Founded in 1933, Kilwell began as a modest family sports operation.

Wells joined as a school leaver, sweeping floors, “licking stamps”, packing orders and learning the factory from the inside out.

Over the years, he helped steer the company through successive waves of change – from bamboo to fibreglass, fibreglass to carbon fibre, and local production to global markets.

At one point, about 80% of Kilwell’s production was exported worldwide, a milestone Wells said gave him “a real buzz”.

He spent months living in California in the early days of composite manufacturing, learning new techniques and helping expand the business into Australia and South Africa.

Fishing rods remained the backbone, but Kilwell expanded into advanced composites, producing high-performance components now used in industries ranging from shooting sports and marine racing to aerospace projects overseas.

One of those projects involved manufacturing carbon fibre tubing in Rotorua for a 90m airship in the United States.

The company employed more than 90 staff a few years ago, Wells said.

Wells, with his elder brother and business partner, John jnr, began marking long service with engraved gold watches.

Then came honour boards, framed photographs and eventually, gold frames for 40-year veterans. The staffroom walls became a quiet record of loyalty.

Some employees’ children followed their parents through the same doors. Then came the grandchildren.

Wells said there was a “family atmosphere”.

Eight years into retirement, he still measured success by what he created and what was left standing when he moved on.

He chased longevity.

Wells said his “greatest joy” was buying into the family company with his brother and then being able to “walk out”, passing the business – “warts and all” – to his children and letting them make it their own.

Annabel Reid is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, based in Rotorua. Originally from Hawke’s Bay, she has a Bachelor of Communications from the University of Canterbury.