Custard square makers raise over $300,000

MEDIA STATEMENT

5/12/2016

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Custard square makers raise over $300,000 for World Custard Invasion

South Canterbury's Denheath Desserts hit their minimum goal of $300,000 on their crowdlending campaign last night at 9pm.

“Today marks the next big step in our World Custard Invasion” says Denheath co-founder, Lisa Templeton. “We’re so excited that we’ve raised enough to start our plans, and hope to hit our maximum goal before we close on Thursday.”

Lisa and husband Donald took over Denheath Desserts when Lisa’s mother passed away 17 years ago. They have taken the company from a provincial cafe to a national producer to an international exporter of custard squares. They currently make over 10,000 custard squares a day in their Timaru based factory.

“We feel blessed by the support we’ve received so far from our crowd. We’ve always worked hard to make this a reality for Mum and our own family. Now we’ve grown the Denheath family and we’ll be putting everything into our mission to have Denheath custard squares selling all over the world.”

137 people have pledged to the crowdfunding campaign so far, including some locals who didn’t want to use technology to invest.

“We’ve had a few pledgers request a paper based way to show their support. So PledgeMe created a new way for those pledgers to post in their pledges, making sure everyone who wanted to get involved could.”

Part of the goal of the campaign is to improve efficiencies in Denheath Desserts’ Timaru based factory, increase exports, and grow regional employment.

“We want to grow our business in New Zealand and take South Canterbury's iconic dessert to the world. We’re often told we should move to Auckland to grow our business, but we know we can grow our company from Timaru. We want to live here, and create jobs here.”

Denheath’s crowdlending campaign is aiming to reach the maximum goal of $1.2 million before it closes on Thursday 8 December (Lisa’s Birthday). You can check it out at pldg.me/custard.

ENDS

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