The proposed closure followed Oji Fibre Solutions cutting 130 jobs and closing the country\u2019s last paper-making machine at nearby Kinleith in June this year, with one local leader saying 2025 had been a \u201cmost brutal year\u201d.<\/p>\n
South Waikato Mayor Gary Petley says Tokoroa needs to move away from being a timber town to survive. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
South Waikato Mayor Gary Petley said he was shocked at the news of more possible job losses in the district.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis doesn\u2019t help us one little bit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Petley and others in the community felt the closure was a \u201cdone deal\u201d and a box-ticking exercise.<\/p>\n
E T\u016b union spokesman for the plant, Red Middlemiss, said this was because the company could make and import plywood from overseas for about 60% of what it costs to make it locally.<\/p>\n
He said several things had brought the situation to a head.<\/p>\n
\u201cA little bit of it is the cost of power, but not all of it. A little bit is cost of primary products, but not all of it. And a little bit is our own reluctance to go and diversify,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Petley said the town needed to move away from being a timber town to survive.<\/p>\n
He said while the Government had offered some support for people affected by the closures, more \u201chigh-level\u201d plans were needed for the regions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easy for them to suggest, you know, \u2018we\u2019re going to announce that we\u2019re going to spend $70 million on tourism for concerts and sports events in Auckland\u2019 \u2013 it doesn\u2019t help our community and those communities like ours that are suffering because of processing plant closures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Middlemiss agreed and said he believed a plan was needed to turn closing factories into sites producing products for the future, such as wood pellets. But that would take investment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about money – money, money, money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It is understood that if the company closes the plant, redundancies will take effect in November.<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The proposed closure followed Oji Fibre Solutions cutting 130 jobs and closing the country\u2019s last paper-making machine at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[40729,40728,138,17163,14134,40730,1953,111,139,69,4885,25688,61,17160,810,4478],"class_list":["post-46427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-40729","tag-affect","tag-business","tag-closure","tag-decision","tag-kirkbymcleod","tag-libby","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-plant","tag-plywood","tag-to","tag-tokoroa","tag-up","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46427","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=46427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}