Trade Aid Palmerston North to close its Broadway Ave store

Trade Aid Palmerston North volunteers (from left) Mayumi Kawasaki, Rebecca Beer, Alyson Chandler and Andrew Gore will soon hang up their red aprons. Photo / Judith Lacy

Trade Aid Palmerston North will remain open until at least the end of June.

This gives customers time to stock up on fair trade chocolate, tea and coffee, plus get 40 per cent off all craft items.

In March, Trade Aid chief executive Geoff White announced the social enterprise was closing its 24 stores nationwide so it could focus on imports, wholesale and online retail sales. It had faced a challenging environment in the past two years with rising costs and diminishing sales.

To ensure its ongoing sustainability, Trade Aid had made the “difficult decision” to close its stores, White said.

Trade Aid Palmerston North has been open for 47 years and currently has 12 volunteers. Its longest-serving volunteer is Inez Pearce, 102, who started more than 35 years ago.

Acting manager Andrew Gore has been a volunteer for more than 20 years. “While our part in the story is changing, we are excited to see the vision continuing in its new form in the years to come.”

The Broadway Ave store will be open until June 30 but it could be longer, he said.

Alyson Chandler, who has been a volunteer for more than 20 years, said Trade Aid would keep on trucking and the future was exciting.

Volunteers are being kept busy with new stock continuously arriving. “It’s been box city out the back with all the boxes coming in.”

The Palmerston North store is run by Third World Trust (Manawatū), which Chandler chairs. She said it would keep going, perhaps focusing on fair trade education.

Long-serving Palmerston North manager Nicky Armstrong left at the beginning of the year before the closure was announced. No one in Palmerston North is being made redundant.

Trade Aid’s Feilding store closed in 2017.

Christchurch couple Vi and Richard Cottrell founded Trade Aid 51 years ago. The social enterprise works with small food and craft producers around the world.

Its purpose is to improve producers’ lives through trading relationships and to increase knowledge of trade justice.

Judith Lacy has been editor of the Manawatū Guardian since December 2020. She graduated from journalism school in 2001, and this is her second role editing a community paper.