Jason Heaven was born to bake, and bake he does.

His father, Graham Heaven, is a legendary baker in Hawkes Bay and around New Zealand, famously passionate about the craft and the business, and Jason was brought up in the bakery.

How could Jason do anything else?

Paul Hansen is widely respected in the baking world. His gentlemanly manner is supported by actual gentlemanly virtues: integrity, courtesy, and respect for others. He is someone who listens more than he speaks. These qualities, fortunately, are not rare, but somehow Paul Hansen personifies them more than most.

Like many bakers, he entered the industry almost by accident. He really wanted to be a soldier or policeman. He  passed the army cadetship entry exams but was too young and was told to come back in a year. He went into baking in the interim and liked it so much that, as he says “I am now in my 42nd year of this wonderful industry.”

Few members would have been surprised, and all would have been pleased, when Phil Folter was presented with a Baking Society Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s conference. His close association with the Society dates back 28 years to when he was the Society’s Apprentice of the Year.

Phil worked his apprenticeship under John van Til, a founder-member of the Society, so he was aware from the beginning of its work and value.

Naturally Phil became a member himself soon after starting his own bakery in 1974.

Peter Gray was born in Wellington in 1954, the youngest of six children of Lewis and Katherine Gray, who had escaped as Jewish refugees from Germany in 1939.