Family and friends of kiwifruit pioneer Roland Woodroffe ‘Roly' Earp will celebrate his life in Pyes Pa on Thursday.

Considered by many to be one of the founding pillars of New Zealand's kiwifruit industry, Roly passed away peacefully at Bethlehem Views in Tauranga on Sunday, December 18. He was 93.

Born and raised in Te Puke, Roly originally trained as an accountant before pursuing a career as a kiwifruit grower in 1959, purchasing a 50 acre dairy farm in Te Puna with childhood friend Grahame Bayliss.

The two broke with tradition by coming the first growers to establish a large scale orchard totally devoted to growing Hayward kiwifruit – the variety on which the industry is now based – and exported their first fruit in 1964.

In the years following, Roly would eventually revolutionise the kiwifruit industry by helping growers to retain control over the marketing of their crops, and would eventually become the first chairman of the Kiwifruit Association in 1978, a position he held up until he retired in 1984.

By the time he retired, the industry was a major horticultural exporter worth more than $100 million in that year.

Friend and kiwifruit grower Mike Muller first met Roly 44 years ago when he and his wife purchased a kiwifruit orchard in Te Puna.

'I needed to find out what a kiwifruit orchard was about because I was a farmer. So I found Roly, who lived just down the road, and from that time on I've known him on a professional and personal basis.

'He is one of the most unselfish people I have ever met. All the time I knew him his focus was entirely around what was best for kiwifruit growers, he believed what was best for the growers was the best for the country's industry.

Mike says even now for 'old growers like me” and those new to kiwifruit growing, they are all huge beneficiaries of Roly's passion and determination for the industry.

'Absolutely no doubt, Roly is a founding pillar of the kiwifruit industry that we know today. He elevated those around him, he singlehandedly did this and he just wouldn't have a bar of it, not a bloody bar of it.

'It's amazing the people in your life that have this clear view of what is best for the whole and I think this sums Roly up for me. Everything he did was for the betterment of everyone.”

'He was the most unassuming, modest and humble man. He was a man of high principal and great integrity, and absolutely steely and resolute in what he wanted to achieve,” says friend and former journalist Rosalie Smith.

'I greatly admire Roly and so do a lot of people. He has a lot of good friends in the kiwifruit industry.”

Rosalie collaborated with Roly on his book The Kiwifruit Adventure published in 1988, which looked at the early history of New Zealand's kiwifruit industry, as well as partly serving as his autobiography.

In his professional and personal life Roly was absolutely determined with what he wanted to achieve and worked hard until he accomplished it. It was the same when writing the book, recalls Rosalie.

'He would hand me a draft chapter and I would edit it and make three sentences into one, and one paragraph into three,” she says with a chuckle.

'But he was determined that my alterations meant that it wasn't saying exactly what he wanted, there was no-changing him. His determination to get his message across as he wanted it really impressed me.

'Almost all of my alterations made it into the final version, 95 per cent. But there was that five per cent that he wanted exactly his way.”

A special ceremony commemorating Roly's life will be commemorated at Pyes Pa Memorial Park Chapel on Pyes Pa Road in Tauranga at 1pm on Thursday, December 22.