Worst skills shortage predicted

The worst skills shortage Northland has ever seen is being predicted by Whangarei heavy engineering companies Donovans and Culhams - although they are currently having to lay staff off.

Brett Donovan, general manager of Donovan Group NZ Ltd, says there are signs the economy is improving very slowly.

He says this would soon start generating building and heavy fabrication skills shortage, especially when the construction phase of the $365 million Marsden Pt expansion begins in the second half of 2013. "Without a doubt it is coming," he said.

Donovans was working hard to keep the skilled workers who would be needed further down the track, trying to keep an even workflow so people were neither "having to do night shifts to work on a contract or standing around twiddling their thumbs.

"We are doing okay but the big challenge at the moment is to retain the team," he said.

Donovans' prefabricated steel building system, now distributed throughout New Zealand, had been a big factor in keeping the workforce more or less intact, although two or three employees were let go.

Culham Engineering, also of Whangarei, is still training apprentices, despite having to lay several employees off because of work being "at a low ebb", says managing director Shane Culham.

"Yes, we still employ apprentices, training them to send off to Australia..." he says drily.

He said Culhams did all it could to find other opportunities for laid-off workers, such as joining forces with Work & Income and ringing other engineering companies to see if there were any vacancies. "We don't treat our boys like numbers."

AWF Labour general manager for New Zealand, Brent Mulholland, said there was no doubt that the Christchurch rebuild would soak up a lot of skilled labour.

"A lot of the construction will call for heavy fabrication skills and there is simply not going to be the resources in New Zealand to deal with that. The shortage will attract a lot of people back from offshore but there will still be others who want to live the Northland lifestyle and if there are jobs here, they will come," he said.