PGG Wrightson chief executive Stephen Guerin likens the business as it exists today to a braided river, reflecting the various mergers that have occurred over the past 175 years.

As the rural services company marked that anniversary, Mr Guerin said it was a story of New Zealand and one that saw a number of the same things still being done nearly two centuries later.

It was May, 1851 when George Gould opened Christchurch’s first general store and, following various mergers and acquisitions, PGG Wrightson was formed in 2005 through the merger of Pyne Gould Guinness Ltd and Wrightson Ltd.

The business still collected wool from farmers — except it was transported by truck rather than by horse and dray — and it still traded livestock and sold merchandise while also providing a host of other services, he said.

It now served rural New Zealand with a nationwide footprint of retail stores, saleyards, wool stores, water branches, real estate offices, distribution centres, and a research station.

The other aspect…