Previous owner Atkinson brought two New Zealand crayon businesses together to form the NZ Crayon brand: Retsol and Spectrum.<\/p>\n
Retsol employed returning soldiers after World War II, while Spectrum provided marking products for the forestry, fishing, and horticulture industries.<\/p>\n
Roger said the crayons were good under wet conditions and were often used for marking trees or polystyrene fish boxes.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrayons will stay. Spray paint can\u2019t be used in the rain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amanda Gilbertson making crayons in real-time. Photo \/ David Hall<\/p>\n
The sustainability of New Zealand-made crayons gives them a \u201cnatural advantage\u201d.<\/p>\n
NZ Crayons are non-toxic, use recycled packaging, and produce minimal waste. Offcuts are melted and used for a new batch of crayons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe process itself is quite sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using three different kinds of wax and 35 available colours, Amanda pours everything into one of her three moulds (hexagonal, standard, or giant).<\/p>\n
She was making 3000 giant fluorescent orange crayons for a 50-box order during The Weekend Sun\u2019s visit to the Pyes P\u0101 warehouse.<\/p>\n
NZ Crayons also supplies retailers with bundles for schools through wholesalers.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids nowadays are good at swiping, and they haven\u2019t really got the pre-writing skills,\u201d Amanda said.<\/p>\n
She researched the hand grasps at different ages and developed the Cognito Crayon, designed to teach children the correct grip.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tool for a preschooler to use for pre-literacy development. It helps them write and draw.\u201d<\/p>\n
Europe has shown interest in NZ Crayons, but Amanda said, \u201cWe\u2019re probably busy enough. I\u2019m already starting to burst at the seams\u201d.<\/p>\n
NZ Crayons\u2019 next step will be to push the Cognito Crayons and move into the Australian market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Previous owner Atkinson brought two New Zealand crayon businesses together to form the NZ Crayon brand: Retsol and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,27495,1561,26561,154136,31741,191,1404,2944,37413,1362,10009,39608,111,43,139,69,1118,2847,1562,9979,4062,18840,5977,2963],"class_list":["post-273033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-and","tag-awaits","tag-bay","tag-colour","tag-crayons","tag-educational","tag-here","tag-industrial","tag-inside","tag-kaleidoscope","tag-made","tag-makers","tag-manufacturer","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-only","tag-plenty","tag-right","tag-school","tag-warehouse","tag-which","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}