The poor roads in the area meant that shipping the apples out was the only option, however eventually a road was built around the Ruby Bay bluffs, linking Nelson with Motueka. A shop, first opened in 1921 to service the locals, stood on the same plot of land as the shop. The name of the town was officially gazetted as Māpua on 5 November 2018. Former contaminated site In the 20th century Māpua became one of the most contaminated sites in New Zealand due to pesticide residues in the soils from a now defunct factory, but the 21st century saw a major cleanup operation. In 1932 the Fruitgrowers Chemical Company built a plant to manufacture pesticides for use in the numerous orchards in the surrounding area. In the 1940s the factory produced organomercury and organochlorine pesticides, including DDT, DDD, dieldrin, 2,4-D and paraquat. Organophosphorous pesticides were produced from the 1960s. By 1978, 124 chemicals were being used to produce 84 different formulations. The plant closed in 1988. The Tasman District Council took over the site in 1989, and measures were taken to prevent leaching of the chemicals into the adjoining Waimea Inlet. In 1999, the Ministry for the Environment allocated funding for a remediation programme, with "on-site" processing selected as the preferred remediation option. Two years later, the Tasman District Council awarded a contract for remedial work to a partnership of Theiss Services (an Australian remediation specialist) and Environmental Decontamination Limited (EDL) of Auckland. Thiess, the main contractor, held the resource consents to carry out the work; EDL supplied the remediation technology: Mechano-Chemical Dehalogenation (MCD). The site was handed back to the Tasman District Council in November 2007. In May 2012, a Department of Labour report found that some of the 30 people who worked on the cleanup suffered health issues including respiratory problems, nausea, collapsing and fatigue. Demographics Māpua Māpua, comprising the SA1 statistical areas of 7022673–7022684, covers . It had a population of 1,254 at the 2018 New Zealand census, an increase of 144 people (13.0%) since the 2013 census, and an increase of 180 people (16.8%) since the 2006 census. There were 489 households. There were 624 males and 615 females, giving a sex ratio of 1.01 males per female, with 231 people (18.4%) aged under 15 years, 96 (7.7%) aged 15 to 29, 564 (45.0%) aged 30 to 64, and 348 (27.8%) aged 65 or older.