Putaruru - where they never say die

Mayor Neil Sinclair was defiant in the face of the mill closure. Photo / Alan Gibson

Last December was meant to be the death of Putaruru. The Carter Holt sawmill that brought the town into existence 103 years earlier was closing, making 212 workers redundant.

"The town is just devastated," South Waikato Mayor Neil Sinclair told the Herald on the day the closure was announced in October.

But three days later he was more defiant. "We've been hit but we aren't down," he declared. "The mill created us but it isn't going to kill us."

And so it has proved to be. Against all the odds, in the teeth of a global economic crisis, Rotorua-based Ministry of Social Development industry partnership adviser Annie Ross says three-quarters of the workers who lost their jobs at the mill have found jobs within an hour's commute of Putaruru.

A further 10 per cent have gone to Australia, leaving only 15 per cent who have taken early retirement or moved into self-employment in contracting or dairying.

It's been done by Carter Holt itself, the ministry - and a hugely supportive local community. "We had at least 50 phone calls in the first two weeks from employers saying, 'We have some work here,"' Ross says.

The company contacted the ministry before the announcement so the agency was ready to open a support centre at the mill immediately.

"We had some excellent staff on board who connected with people. They were local people and could understand where the people wanted to move to and their skills," Ross says.

Carter Holt offered 80 jobs down the road at its Kinleith plywood plant, but surprisingly only about 35 Putaruru workers took up its offer.

Tom Williams, who had worked almost 12 of his 56 years at the Putaruru mill, was one of about 10 per cent of the redundant workers referred to jobs in one of the country's few remaining growth industries - jails. He retrained as a prison guard.

"I was rather concerned that moving into [another job in] the timber industry might only be another short-term form of employment," he says. "I'm actually earning more money in less time [at the prison]."

Nevertheless, Ross estimates 40 per cent of the redundant workers stayed in the timber industry, including Williams' younger brother John, who has become a driver for Putaruru-based Kiwi Lumber.

A third brother, Peter, now drives a bus for Go Bus in Hamilton - one of about 10 per cent of the mill workers who have moved into transport jobs.

A further 15 per cent found work in the food industry, including seasonal work on kiwifruit orchards as far away as Katikati.

About six people commute from Putaruru to the Huntly coal mines.

Rotorua-based EPMU union organiser Red Middlemiss says so many people found jobs elsewhere that Carter Holt had to temporarily take back some of the Putaruru workers who took redundancy because it couldn't fill all the vacancies at Kinleith.

"Everybody who wanted a job got a job," he says.