The Te Puke Post Office may be saved as negotiations are underway with NZ Post.

The Te Puke Centre Working Group are in negotiations with New Zealand Post to become the operators of postal and bill-pay services in Te Puke.

Discussions are also taking place with the landlord of the existing Post Office building to enable to service to stay in its present location and to create a place fit for our purpose.

'This is an amazing opportunity to save the Te Puke Post Office as we know it and it provides an innovative solution to establishing the long-awaited information and visitors centre and a central shared space,” says chairperson of the group, Karen Summerhays.

The Te Puke Charitable Trust is presently being established to provide governance to the Te Puke Centre activities. The NZ Post operation will be operated as part of a social enterprise that provides dividends back to the Trust to support the centre operations.

NZ Post are very open to the social enterprise concept and is working co-operatively with the group to achieve its aims.

The dynamic all-women team of Karen Summerhays, Monique Lints, Jenny Wotten, Nicola Cooke and Viv Brownrigg, have been working steadily for the past 18 months to establish a professional, neutral and shared space that supports the community, its visitors and the industries.

'To be able to proceed with the purchase of the postal services we need to raise the capital to purchase the business outright and cover associated costs,” says Karen.

'As a community driven initiative it is also very important that we gauge the level of support of the community for the Te Puke Centre project as a whole.”

'To this end, we will launch a crowd funding campaign in the very near future and it is hoped that the community will support this project by pledging a donation, to be paid upon us reaching our target of $65k.”