Our Story

Oak Tree began in 2002 as a social enterprise under the umbrella of the Pathway Charitable Group. Co-founder Mike Cooper named it Oak Tree after a passage in Isaiah:

"They will be like oak trees that are strong and straight",

referring to the young men he was working with and mentoring at the time.

From humble beginnings in Christchurch, Oak Tree expanded to Auckland in 2005 and focused on delivering exceptional service to its logistics customers. It did this by coining the term "professional devanner" to describe its workforce and teaching that workforce how to bring a new level of professionalism to the discipline of devanning.

Today Oak Tree continues to operate in Christchurch and Auckland, with more locations on the way, and continues to pride itself on being a professional devanning business, both in terms of the service it provides to customers and also the way it treats its employees.

New levels of efficiency for customers and devanners are delivered through the company's investment in ProDevan, its bespoke end-to-end cloud-based App that handles incoming jobs and has our crews where they are supposed to be on time, every time! Well...almost.

We continue to employ a workforce experienced in the art of devanning, who are committed to high safety standards and getting the job done. The fixed-cost-per-container service we provide allows our customers to avoid overheads while freeing them up to focus on more important tasks.