Government investment in the Far North to would create more job opportunities.<\/a><\/p>\nKait\u0101ia resident Shane McGregor said the closure of the mill would be devastating.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where most of the younger people work and there\u2019s not much other employment around, especially for people that are unskilled. So yeah, it\u2019s going to kill it [the town].\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"]()
Shane McGregor said finding work was hard enough as it is, and the mill closure would add to the strain on employment. Photo \/ Yolisa Tswanya<\/p>\n
McGregor was familiar with the job market, saying it was slim pickings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have got a bit of driving experience, and I work in the hospitality industry and even I couldn\u2019t find a job and it\u2019s getting harder,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are getting tighter and everyone is watching what they spend and I think it\u2019s going to get a lot worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another resident, Sarah Simon, was concerned for the wh\u0101nau of the mill workers. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhere are those families going to go when it closes down?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
![\"]()
Kait\u0101ia resident Sarah Simon said the proposed closure would be devastating for the town. Photo \/ Yolisa Tswanya<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people have been there for years and years and it\u2019s going to really affect them because they\u2019re going to need tickets to get into other jobs and they\u2019re quite old. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to really take its toll in the job situation because it\u2019s already a bad situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simon, like other residents, said she was disappointed the Government was not intervening, given the envisioned impacts the closure could have.<\/p>\n
Kait\u0101ia resident Wendy Crombie noted the mental toll the closure may take on staff and the area in general.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are losing something important for this town,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Another local, Crystal Lambert, has friends working at the mill and said they were worried about their future.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey actually had a pay rise and adjusted their lives to that, and the economic impact is going to be huge and finding jobs is quite tricky for people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Workers First Union has called for intervention and temporary public ownership of the Northland Mill, while criticising the Government for abandoning Northland\u2019s workers with empty words and a blame game.<\/p>\n
![\"]()
The Triboard operation is not affected and efforts to sell it are continuing. Photo \/ Yolisa Tswanya<\/p>\n
Workers First general secretary Dennis Maga criticised the Government responses to the potential closure.<\/p>\n
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones has previously described the situation as \u201cenormously disappointing\u201d, saying Juken had not approached the Government for support. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the former Government\u2019s \u201cfailed\u201d energy policy for the closure.<\/p>\n
Maga said: \u201cWhat\u2019s enormously disappointing is this lack of interest and lack of intervention by a Government that appears to have given up on New Zealand manufacturing altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n
Workers First is calling on the Government to intervene before a decision is made on July 16, and to consider temporary public ownership of the Northland Mill while a viable buyer is found.<\/p>\n
Should it close, the mill is likely to become the seventh major wood processing site to close, with more than 800 jobs lost in the industry since late 2023. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JNL pointed to tough trading conditions, including falling demand, rising costs and insufficient work to keep the mill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6127,138,17163,124,528,1866,6098,2959,78,232,189194,120,5812,7243,35020,111,139,529,69,1118,530,5659,5215,14005,53355,2951,241,540,1533,27904,74944],"class_list":["post-501949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-already","tag-business","tag-closure","tag-could","tag-far","tag-find","tag-hard","tag-high","tag-in","tag-jobs","tag-juken","tag-likely","tag-make","tag-mill","tag-mills","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-residents","tag-say","tag-timber","tag-times","tag-tougher","tag-town","tag-unemployment","tag-where","tag-will","tag-worry","tag-worsen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501949","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=501949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}