With over 20 years of experience, Oak Tree is a leading container devanning company operating in Canterbury and Auckland, New Zealand — and has recently expanded its devanning services to Australia, with offices now open in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney.
We specialise in professional container loading and unloading solutions and offer rewarding employment, training, and skill development opportunities for people who enjoy physical, hands-on work in the logistics and warehousing industry.
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.
At that time, most container unloading was performed by temp agencies charging hourly rates. Oak Tree quickly grew by pioneering a fixed-cost model, a concept that has since become the industry norm.
From humble beginnings in Christchurch, Oak Tree expanded to Auckland in 2005 and built its reputation on delivering exceptional service to logistics customers. We coined the term 'professional devanner' to describe our workforce and instilled a culture of pride, precision, and professionalism in the discipline of container unloading.
Today, Oak Tree operates in Christchurch and Auckland, and launched in Brisbane, Australia in 2025, bringing our proven service model and people-first approach to a new market.
New levels of efficiency for customers and crews alike are powered by ProDevan, our bespoke, cloud-based end-to-end app. ProDevan features a customer portal that allows logistics clients to easily load container jobs directly into the system. The portal also provides real-time access to onsite job information and tracking, including who is onsite, job start and completion times, real-time work tracking, health and safety compliance, and a wide range of performance and operational reporting.
These features are designed to make life easier for operations managers and ensure full visibility and accountability at every stage of the job.
We are a proud social enterprise, offering meaningful career advancement to people from diverse backgrounds, free from discrimination. Our workforce is experienced, safety-focused, and dedicated to getting the job done right.
Our fixed-cost-per-container service allows customers to eliminate overheads and concentrate on what they do best, while we take care of the heavy lifting.
