200 layoffs announced for East Coast

The East Coast is reeling after nearly 200 job layoffs were announced by two companies within days of each other.

Today, WPI International told 65 staff at their Prime Sawmill in Gisborne it would be closed, after a downturn in international prices and a continued high New Zealand dollar.

This followed Gisborne food processor Cedenco confirming at the weekend it was closing one of its factories, resulting in at least 125 seasonal workers losing their jobs.

A WPI shift worker said the company was closing the mill down over the next four weeks.

He said workers had not seen this coming and were absolutely gutted. They had been assured a couple of weeks ago that everything was fine, the worker said.

WPI managing director David Anderson said the company had reached a "disappointing point".

"We are aware of the impact of a closure on the workers at the mill and on the local community," he said.

The company had invited suggestions from staff over the next few days but Mr Anderson said he believed the scale of the rapidly accumulating losses would require the site to be closed almost immediately.

WPI would provide redundancy payments and assistance to employees if the site closed, he said.

The company had been facing difficulties in both Asian and US markets for sawn lumber since the downturn in the global economy.

Cedenco told staff on Friday they would be shutting their retort factory, which heats vacuum-packed corn cobs.

The company has cited a drop in international demand for corn cobs and kernels as the reason for the closure.

Cedenco's New Zealand manager Richard Lawrence said all other businesses including the main factory in Gisborne, a Hawke's Bay factory and an Australian processing plant would operate as normal.

As well as the loss of 125 jobs at the seasonal peak, growers, contractors and all the industries that service the factory and growers would be affected.

Gisborne manager Richard Thorp said Cedenco was forecasting a reduction of up to 30 per cent of the land required for its corn programme. This amounted to 700 hectares.

The company had to look at the parts of its business that were not going so well, and focus on the parts of the business that were very sound, Mr Thorp said.

The retort factory was one of New Zealand's biggest vegetable processors, with two Gisborne factories, a processing plant at Whakatu in Hawke's Bay and a business in Ohakune, in the Central North Island.

The company has said it hoped the redundant workers would find employment at other Cedenco plants in Gisborne.

- NZPA