The Partridge Laureate Programme | Partridge

As the business embarks on its sixth generation of family ownership and governance, marking an impressive 160 years of continuous operation, its long-standing support of the community will enter into a new era as it focuses on the Partridge Family Foundation Trust, of which the Partridge Laureate programme will be a major focus. 

“We are lucky to enjoy generational success as a business and on behalf of myself and my children, we want to share that success by supporting those with the potential to make a real difference.” says Owner and Managing Director Grant Partridge. “We have worked to formalise and consolidate our efforts in supporting the wider community for some time now. Our 160th anniversary feels like the right time to announce the Laureate programme,” he says.

The initiative has been a work-in-progress for the Partridge family for some years now and represents the culmination of efforts between the business’s current owner, Grant Partridge, and his sons Cory, Sam and Jack - all of whom play an active role in the business today.

Of the project’s focus areas, Grant’s youngest son Jack Partridge says “We considered several fields—health, innovation, arts, and culture—all of which are important to us. However, we wanted to take this opportunity to invest in an area that could make a significant difference to the lives of New Zealanders. This led us to focus on health sciences as a starting point, with an acknowledgement that as the programme grows, we may expand into other areas.”

The co-recipients of the company's first official grant in 2024 are Professor Julian Paton of Manaaki Manawa - The Centre for Heart Research, University of Auckland, and Dr Amanda Dixon-McIver, laboratory director at IGENZ. The Inaugural Partridge Laureates’ work centres on heart health research. This includes leading a project to introduce a DNA sequencing technique to identify the most effective blood pressure medications for individual patients, a process that is currently reliant on trial and error resulting in ineffective treatment plans.

Professor Paton says of the programme: “The funds will allow us to do research that we could not otherwise do, opening up opportunities for impact. With cardiovascular disease the country’s biggest killer and high blood pressure the single most important risk factor causing heart attacks and strokes, our research will focus on better control of blood pressure thereby preventing the destructive outcomes that can occur.”

Remarkably, over 50 percent of patients remain hypertensive despite treatment leaving them at serious risk of a cardiovascular event such as a stroke or heart attack. This is worsened if the patient is also diabetic. These patients represent a huge unmet clinical need within New Zealand’s health system. The pair’s project aims to determine why medications are not working in these patients, the reasons for which include either the wrong drug choice — the result of an archaic ‘trial and error’ process — and/or the current frontline medications are not targeting the reason for the patient’s high blood pressure.

“We propose to address these two issues specifically via a two-pronged approach,” explains Dr. Dixon-McIver. “The first being to test a new way to inform the patient what their optimal drug treatment should be (no more trial and error), and secondly, test pre-clinically a brand-new drug for controlling both blood pressure and blood sugar simultaneously.”

On becoming Partridge’s inaugural co-Laureate, Professor Paton remarks, “I am so impressed with the fact that a company that makes jewellery has made a national commitment to support research. You can’t do better than investing in the future to make New Zealand a healthier place for our children and our children’s children.”

The Partridge family has worked closely with the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy and the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences to identify candidates in medical research fields whose work aligns with the programme’s values of being in its nascent stages, yet showing the potential to hugely impact health outcomes in New Zealand.

Partridge’s Inaugural Laureate Recipients will be supported into 2026 and beyond.