Putting wheels under manufacturing base

His workforce has more than doubled, but the Australian manager of Ford's export wheels plant in Manukau City frets at NewZealand's shrinking manufacturing base.

The Wiri plant has just undergone a $US25 million ($62.5 million) upgrade, trebling annual production capacity to 1.8 million alloy wheels worth more than $150 million in export receipts, and expanding its workforce from 220 a year ago.

Its new complement of 470, not counting relentless furnace-loading robots, exceeds the 300-strong workforce made redundant when the Ford and Mazda vehicle assembly plant next door closed in the face of tumbling import tariffs in 1997.

Using Comalco aluminium from the South Island, the plant exports everything it makes, mainly to Ford's North American car factories but with 20,000 wheels and 100,000 engine mounts a year going to Australia.

Wheels plant manager Kym Murphy is careful to note that he has been here only 18 months, implying he would not presume to offer all the answers to our economic woes.

But while presiding over a successful expansion project, he cannot disguise his concern about an overall decline in manufacturing.

"One couldn't be happy with the general state of manufacturing in New Zealand," he says.

"You've lost an enormous amount of skills - the technology base of New Zealand is shrinking fast and something has to be done."

Household Labour Force Survey figures show manufacturers employed just 15.9 per cent of the country's workers in June, compared with 20.3 per cent in 1985.

Economist Brian Easton says that while "deindustrialisation" is common to most Western nations, New Zealand has chopped manufacturing more drastically than most, threatening our economic viability.

Mr Murphy says he is no great fan of tariffs protecting industries from global competition.

He sees tariff reductions as inevitable worldwide, but adds that it is arguable how fast the barriers should be brought down.

And he is also reluctant to prescribe measures from his homeland, where vehicle tariffs will remain frozen at 15 per cent until 2005.

But the demise of the New Zealand assembly industry saw a dramatic shrinkage of the country's technical base, he says.

"A lot of people had robotics programming skills, for example, and when the vehicle industry went, a lot of these skills washed away. You can't run a modern first-world society without a good manufacturing base."

Asked about transforming New Zealand into a knowledge economy, with more focus on selling services such as software development to the world, he says the 24,000 registered job-seekers in South Auckland are "unfortunately not going to get into that game. We need work these people can do."

Not that Ford is shy of doing its bit for the knowledge economy.

While waiting for computers and internet connections to supply to every worker for home use, the plant runs on-site training courses starting with numeracy and literacy skills, and has sponsored a metallurgist through his doctorate studies.

Storeman Sat Prasad, who was out of work for 18 months after being made redundant from the assembly plant next door, has been on a string of courses on his days off, being reimbursed for half his class time for each pass, as well as gaining pay rises.

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