{"id":346400,"date":"2026-03-25T03:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T03:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/346400\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T03:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T03:56:09","slug":"mccain-hastings-plant-closure-hawkes-bay-growers-warn-of-bigger-crisis-say-nows-the-time-for-overhaul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/346400\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain Hastings plant closure: Hawke\u2019s Bay growers warn of bigger crisis, say now\u2019s the time for overhaul"},"content":{"rendered":"

The company\u2019s financials highlight the significant pressure facing the New Zealand arm of the business<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under McCain Food New Zealand\u2019s parent company, Weyville Holdings, McCain\u2019s New Zealand operation reported a $16.9 million loss in the year to June 30, 2025.<\/p>\n

The financial result shows the company\u2019s revenue fell from $325.7m in 2024 to $306.7m in 2025, a drop of $19.9m year-on-year.<\/p>\n

Peter Raikes from Raikes Family Holdings has been growing crops in Hastings for McCains for more than 20 years and said the news was a \u201cbombshell\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had no idea. I knew they were struggling in terms of sales, but I never thought they would pull the pin.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said McCains had been a good company to deal with and that he would look at his options to try to retain staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not going to despair, we will just press on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hugh Ritchie\u2019s family farm in \u014ct\u0101ne has been growing process crops since the 1960s and for McCain since 1996.<\/p>\n

He found out about the plant closure on Tuesday when a friend called him after seeing the story in the media.<\/p>\n

Ritchie said the farm was McCain\u2019s only carrot supplier, and its equipment to pre-process the carrots would become redundant.<\/p>\n

He had contacted staff to reassure them that work would carry on.<\/p>\n

Ritchie said the closure would affect half the farm\u2019s cropping area and \u201cabout a quarter\u201d of the farm\u2019s income.<\/p>\n

He said McCain had reduced the current season\u2019s total volume of peas by \u201cabout 20%\u201d and sweetcorn and beans by 50% because of frozen stock the company couldn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n

But Ritchie said indications from McCain \u201cenvisaged getting back to normal production levels this coming season\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ritchie said he suspected Heinz Wattie announcing it would cut jobs around the country, including in Hastings<\/a>, had emboldened food processors like McCain to follow suit.<\/p>\n

He said the job losses and closures were not companies \u201cdoing growers dirty\u201d but making a \u201cvalid commercial decision to stay in business or not\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question we have to ask is, why can\u2019t they make money?\u201d Ritchie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that there\u2019s an undue balance in power in who owns or who claims the value creation from the products.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be able to assure ourselves that there is actually a viable food-growing option in this country, and if it\u2019s not, why not? Because it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supermarkets have been in the spotlight following Wattie\u2019s job cuts, with Newsroom reporting Foodstuffs had appeared to prioritise its own branded product over Wattie\u2019s since a 2021 frozen goods review.<\/p>\n

A Foodstuffs spokesperson said margins varied, but as a general guide, the breakdown for every dollar spent in its stores was:<\/p>\n

\u2013 68c goes to suppliers<\/p>\n

\u2013 15c covers the cost of doing business<\/p>\n

\u2013 13c covers GST<\/p>\n

\u2013 About 4c is post-tax profit retained by local stores in the co-operatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many steps between the farmgate price and the shelf,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why comparing a raw commodity price directly to a retail price doesn\u2019t reflect the full picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Woolworths spokesperson said its margins and pricing strategies were \u201ccommercially sensitive\u201d, but said it was a low-margin, high-volume business.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf every dollar spent in our stores, around 62c goes to our suppliers. We keep about 2.3c, and the remainder goes to paying wages and other operational costs, and investing in our store network,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Ritchie said he was an efficient operator, and the farm didn\u2019t have a large labour component.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s the case, why can\u2019t the companies make money out of it?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if we aren\u2019t efficient, well, we probably need to find out and then go and do something else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said people across the agricultural sector were asking where the profit margins were and who profited from the margins.<\/p>\n

Ritchie said \u201cwe might have to effect some change\u201d if there is a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe information I\u2019m getting is that there is a problem somewhere within, from once it leaves the farm to when … the consumer actually is getting it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s an imbalance in who shares the value.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritchie said if there was a bright side to the situation, it was people \u201csitting up and saying \u2018what the hell is going on?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He said once that\u2019s answered, you get people to \u201cpick the pieces up and start again\u201d in a profitable environment that justifies the investment, or pivot to something else.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt should be seen as a much bigger issue than just the process veges.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something that needs to be addressed because just about every industry you talk about actually says that they just don\u2019t feel like the system is working well.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t waste a good crisis … we need to take this monumental problem and then maybe try and get some good out of it to make sure, going forward, that we have a more sustainable foothold business-wise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Britain, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The company\u2019s financials highlight the significant pressure facing the New Zealand arm of the business. Under McCain Food…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9331,1561,41216,138,17163,124,537,18660,564,2082,19392,23361,5194,1976,2454,183707,184212,111,139,32219,69,1118,5256,4885,70675,5659,312,223,2044,26697],"class_list":["post-346400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-chance","tag-bay","tag-bigger","tag-business","tag-closure","tag-could","tag-crisis","tag-crop","tag-food","tag-for","tag-grower","tag-growers","tag-hastings","tag-hawkes","tag-industry","tag-mccain","tag-mccains","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nows","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-overhaul","tag-plant","tag-processing","tag-say","tag-says","tag-the","tag-time","tag-warn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}