Hawkes Bay hit hard by meat industry changes

By LIBBY MIDDLEBROOK

The meat industry has laid off more workers in Hawkes Bay during the past two decades than any other sector of the business community.

Whakatu and Tomoana freezing works, once two of the region's largest employers, closed in the 1980s with more than 3000 jobs lost.

Further consolidation took place in 1998 with Hastings-based Richmond's takeover of Hawkes Bay meat processor Lowe Walker, resulting in beef, lamb and boning operation closures and another 500-odd job losses.

Since then, the skeletons of the mothballed freezing works have been swallowed up by other food manufacturers such as Heinz-Wattie, providing some replacement employment for the region's population of 146,000. While other plants such as Takapau opened to take their place, Meat Workers' Union Aotearoa secretary Graham Cooke says there are at least 1000 fewer jobs overall in the Hawkes Bay meat industry today.

"There's been a hell of a rundown in the number of jobs around in places like Hawkes Bay. There will always be a place for meat manufacturing there, but this sort of thing is going to keep happening in order for us to be able to compete in the world market."

Richmond chief executive John Loughlin says consolidation in the Hawkes Bay meat industry was inevitable, with a 30 million drop in the national lamb flock between the early 1980s and 2000 driven by market demand.

"The big old dinosaur plants that used to exist have virtually gone. There were massive inefficiencies in the old plants. Anything like that was doomed."

Today there are four main players in the meat industry - Richmond, Affco, PPCS and Alliance. They have swallowed up more than 100 small processors and distributors that used to operate in regions such as Hawkes Bay.

Richmond, a beef, venison and lamb processor/manufacturer that employs around 4000 and exports more than 90 per cent of its production, has also invested millions in technology and automation. The latest upgrade of its Takapau plant cost more than $14 million.

There is an increased demand for tertiary qualified and highly skilled workers as food-safety scandals around the world have placed more emphasis on hygiene and food-technology issues.

Karen Cooper, chief executive of Hawkes Bay's regional economic growth development group Vision 2020, said the organisation was encouraging education providers such as the Taradale-based Eastern Institute of Technology to place greater emphasis on primary industries such as meat, viticulture, horticulture and forestry so that manufacturing companies did not have to recruit outside the region.