Obituary: self-made man contributed much to Dunedin

Otago Daily Times

06-07-2025

SIR CLIFF SKEGGS
Young and ambitious and with nothing to lose, Bluff boy Cliff Skeggs carved out an incredibly successful career in both business and local government.
From humble beginnings in the Southland port town, Skeggs created a commercial empire in fisheries, shipping, aviation and property, going on to become the only person to serve four terms as the mayor of Dunedin. Ultimately a man with few airs and graces would end up as Sir Clifford Skeggs.
Born in Bluff in 1931, Clifford George Skeggs was the youngest of three children of dairy owner George and wife Beatrice.
His father, who had lied about his age to fight in World War 1, volunteered when World War 2 broke out but was invalided home from North Africa. Following rehabilitation, he worked as a labourer and ran a shoe repair business.
Between living his early years during the Depression and his teenage years with his father battling to make ends meet, when Cliff Skeggs was not attending Bluff School and Southland Technical College he was working a paper run and any other ventures he could find to add to the family income.
In 1947, aged 16, he left school and headed up the highway to Dunedin to begin a boat building apprenticeship with Port Chalmers firm Miller and Tunnage. There was a 2-shilling shortfall between his wages and his rent, which meant Skeggs had to work part-time at the local cinema and also fix and build boats in whatever spare time he had left to make ends meet.
"I was a real aggressive person," he told the ODT in 1989.
"I had seen that I needed money to exist and promote myself."
However, his ambitions came to a screaming halt three years later when a Christmas Eve 1950 motorcycle crash on the road between Invercargill and Bluff left Skeggs with a severely broken leg. The bones would have to be re-set several times and the injury troubled him for the remainder of his life.
While recovering, Skeggs completed what proved to be a very useful correspondence course in accounting, before returning to his pursuit of Marie Ledgerwood, the daughter of a Deborah Bay fisherman, who he had met at a dance earlier in 1950.
They married in 1952.
Skeggs was well aware of his wife's contribution to his success: "She is a fine person who presents herself in a more dignified manner than I do. I'm the one who is the roughneck."
Aged 22, with £240 in the bank, Skeggs employed four of his fellow apprentices and went into business converting fishing boats for crayfishing. An early venture saw him and his father-in-law buy a "clapped-out old heap" from Australia, somehow getting it across the Tasman, and then making it into a sturdy crayfishing boat — of which Skeggs was entitled to half the catch.
No doubt impressed by his son-in-law's work ethic, Bill Ledgerwood made him manager of Otakou Fisheries fishing fleet in 1956. Ever a quick learner, Skeggs rapidly made his mark on the firm's fortunes before setting out on his own again, founding Skeggs Fisheries Ltd in 1958.
The ocean, and especially Bluff oysters, were the foundations on which the firm — later to become Skeggs Foods and Skeggs Group — were based. As the company grew so did Skeggs' personal and business interests: frozen food, coastal shipping, forestry, engineering, venison and live deer recovery, poultry and meat processing enterprises were all elements of the Skeggs portfolio at some stage.
Although a man of the sea, Skeggs was also keenly interested in making money on land. From the 1960s onwards he began to build a commercial property portfolio in Dunedin, which included prime spots in George St.
The air also held no terrors for Skeggs. A qualified pilot (he gained his licence in 1968), he had a few alarms and emergency landings to his credit. Skeggs also made a short-lived investment in a domestic air service, Pacifica Air, in 1987 before selling out to the far stronger competition.
The year before National Business Review , in its annual rich list, assessed Skegg's fortune at about $65 million. Never believing he had to be modest about being successful, Skeggs told the Otago Daily Times that figure would be "about right".
Skeggs also bought land in Central Otago and in 1979 he made perhaps his most successful investment, buying the 121ha Mount Iron Farms property on the edge of what was then the sleepy town of Wānaka.
Although much of the land was later sold to developer Alan Dippie — the men were close and Dippie regarded Skeggs as a mentor — Skeggs retained several hectares. Much of the town's expansion has been built on land formerly owned by Skeggs, and Wānaka was where he and Marie settled down upon Skeggs' retirement.
"Rightly or wrongly, I had a strategy of moving things on if I could see I could make something reasonable from a deal," he once told the Otago Daily Times .
"My philosophy is that if the worst comes to the worst you should always have something to cash in."
The worst sometimes did come for Skeggs. With truly unfortunate timing, in 1987 he listed Skeggs Corporation Ltd on the New Zealand Stock Exchange.
A month later stock markets world-wide plummeted, sparking a global recession. Within two years, Skeggs Corp was bought out by Wilson Neill.
Far from being deterred, Cliff Skeggs — by then Sir Clifford — rebuilt his business. Fishing was once more the mainstay, but the firm also bought Otago vineyards and operated a range of tourism enterprises.
In 2000 he was inducted into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame. By 2014 the NBR 's rich list estimated his personal worth at about $150m, a clear demonstration of both Skeggs' acumen and his ability to rebound from setbacks.
Politics is a field where setbacks abound, but Skeggs took as naturally to local government as he did to business. Being both professionally and personally interested in the port's success, Skeggs was elected to the Otago Harbour Board in 1968 and became chairman five years later, at the age of 42. As the 1970s dawned the port was embarking on a period of expansion, the building of a new container terminal being the ultimate aim.
Overcoming some opposition, as well as the indifference of national politicians, Skeggs helped get the terminal approved, built, and then officially opened in 1977. He described that achievement as the pinnacle of his career.
Skeggs stepped down as chairman that year, although he remained a board member. He was appointed chairman of the newly instituted Port Otago Ltd in 1989.
In 1971 Skeggs was elected to the Dunedin City Council. Six years later, aged 46, he was elected mayor for the first of four terms in the top job.
"Dunedin was in a hell of a state when I first got the mayoralty," he later told the ODT .
"That first year, we lost 5000 people in the drift north. The University of Otago had 6000 students when I went in as mayor; when I left, the tertiary institutions in the city had about 20,000 students. I have to say we made a lot of progress. Determination won through."
One thing Skeggs never lacked was determination, although those who stood in opposition to him sometimes found him a relentless foe. Skeggs was a man who led from the front and liked to dominate proceedings.
For some, that made him difficult to work with. For others, it meant he was an inspirational torch bearer for Dunedin.
During that 12-year stint as the city's mayor it is no exaggeration to say that Skeggs transformed both the city council and Dunedin.
Unashamedly pro-growth, he backed projects as diverse as the (rejected) proposal to build an aluminium smelter at Aramoana, and also the prototype of what became Forsyth Barr Stadium.
He restructured and corporatised of the DCC's management structure along the business lines he was familiar with and knew worked, and also oversaw the creation of Dunedin City Holdings — the council's business arm.
He backed the building of a new Civic Centre, opened in 1982, to put council services beside the city library and create a one-stop shop for civic services.
Skeggs' methods ruffled feathers. In 1986 the Citizens Association — for which he had always stood — endorsed his deputy Bill Christie as its mayoral candidate.
Undaunted, Skeggs stood as an independent and won again. Always able to mix easily with any and all, Skeggs showed he was both a gifted campaigner and immensely popular with people from all walks of life.
That ability, naturally, attracted the attention of national political parties. Skeggs flirted with the idea but realising that he would not be able to be as hands on as he preferred he, perhaps wisely, turned all such offers down.
In 1987, Cliff Skeggs became Sir Clifford Skeggs, a deserved honour which he swore did not change him: "I didn't expect one because I thought perhaps I was too much of an individual. Anyway, I was more interested in Dunedin's future than accolades."
Skeggs was always honest, sometimes brutally so, and spared few the truth — including himself.
Looking back on his decision to step down from the mayoralty in 1989, Skeggs told the ODT that the reason he left politics was that he felt he was "becoming a bit of a dictator".
He added: "I wanted it my way or I didn't want it. And I didn't really like that."
Sir Clifford spent his final few full-time working years building Skeggs Group to a point where he could hand control over to his three sons, David (managing director), Graeme and Bryan, in 2005.
He never fully retired though, enjoying spending the winter months in Fiji and watching the expansion of a marina he had bought there in the 1990s.
Sir Clifford, always a keen builder, also took much joy from playing an active role in the design and construction of houses, including his own home on the shores of Lake Wānaka.
Sir Clifford Skeggs, by now both a grandfather and great-grandfather, died on June 12 aged 94. — Mike Houlahan.