{"id":351703,"date":"2026-03-28T04:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T04:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/351703\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T04:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T04:41:09","slug":"central-hawkes-bay-mayor-questions-watties-mccain-closures-in-pretty-good-food-producing-region-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/351703\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Hawke\u2019s Bay mayor questions Wattie\u2019s, McCain closures in \u2018pretty good food-producing region\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s just come at a really bad time when there\u2019s a lot of bad news happening out there and a lot of pressure on households and businesses already with increased costs<\/a> and uncertainty. Now you\u2019ve got people\u2019s jobs that are lost, and associated businesses would\u2019ve lost a lot of work as well directly from this supply chain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess we\u2019re all sitting here wondering why what we think is a pretty good food-producing region is struggling to produce and compete with imported food products? That\u2019s what we need to get to the bottom of and work out why is that happening and what can we do to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CentralCentral Hawke’s Bay Mayor Will Foley says the factory closures are a huge blow for the area.<\/p>\n

Buy NZ Made, an organisation that supports Kiwi-made products, said the closures were a stark reminder of the mounting pressures local producers faced.<\/p>\n

Executive director Dane Ambler said producers were facing rising costs, weaker demand and competition with international firms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think now is really the time to get behind local producers. I think we need much stronger and more deliberate backing of New Zealand-made goods and services both by Government and consumers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Government can go a long way to ensuring that local industries survive by basically changing procurement practices that prioritise local suppliers and targeted support. I don\u2019t think that New Zealand-made businesses have needed as much support as they need right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canterbury vegetable grower Alastair Clemens, who grew processed peas and carrots for Heinz Wattie\u2019s in Barrhill, said the closures were devastating for growers.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of guys in our area grow processed peas, there might be 30 or 40 growers in our area that grow processed peas that had gone to the factory in the past, so that\u2019s quite a hole left there<\/a> that\u2019s got to be filled up with something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cProcessed carrots have been a significant part of our rotation for quite a number of years, we\u2019re sort of investigating other options for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe area we\u2019re in is good for root crops, potatoes and carrots and that sort of thing, so we\u2019d like to think we could find something for that but it does leave a pretty big gap and it is pretty devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clemens said he might end up growing food for the dairy industry, or becoming one of the \u201cmany people who are converting to cows\u201d because that was where the money and demand was at the moment.<\/p>\n

\u2013 RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s just come at a really bad time when there\u2019s a lot of bad news happening out there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[47705,59740,1561,1558,138,1853,8606,13741,186300,6101,6098,1976,78,10934,183707,111,139,69,56769,17146,381,312,23359],"class_list":["post-351703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-announcements","tag-backtoback","tag-bay","tag-been","tag-business","tag-central","tag-closures","tag-factory","tag-foodproducing","tag-good","tag-hard","tag-hawkes","tag-in","tag-mayor","tag-mccain","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pretty","tag-questions","tag-region","tag-says","tag-watties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351703","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=351703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}