Workers laid off while meat plant rebuilt

Alliance Group workers in departments affected by Sunday's fire at the Pukeuri meat works in North Otago will be laid off until work is available.

Alliance management representatives met staff at Pukeuri, just north of Oamaru, this morning to tell them about work prospects after the plant was crippled by the blaze sparked by a suspected electrical fault.

Alliance chief executive Grant Cuff told staff the board had decided to rebuild the plant's destroyed facilities. The plant was fully insured.

Pukeuri is North Otago's largest employer, with more than 900 workers on the payroll.

Mr Cuff said processing had stopped although some ancillary services were still operating. Workers in the affected department would be laid off until work was available.

Slaughtering on all sheep and lamb chains and the beef chain would be restarted as soon as possible, with the first chains possibly operating again in four weeks.

"Workers will be re-employed as facilities are re-established," Mr Cuff said in a statement today.

Some staff would be offered work at other Alliance plants in the interim.

"The company is holding discussions with Work and Income New Zealand on the stand-down period applying to benefits for employees who are unlikely to be re-employed during the balance of the season," Mr Cuff said.

Stock was being diverted to other Alliance plants for processing.

Meat Workers' Union national secretary Dave Eastlake said there had been a "fairly positive mood" among workers at the Pukeuri meeting this morning.

He welcomed the Alliance Group decision to rebuild the damaged plant.

While the layoffs were "pretty inevitable" given the serious situation, it was encouraging the company was trying to get the chains working within four weeks.

"That should ensure that most people get back (to work) within a reasonable period of time, given the circumstances," Mr Eastlake said.

He understood Alliance was looking at alternative sites both within the company and outside where boning and further processing could be done.

"Obviously the boning rooms have got to be rebuilt and they are not going to be done in a hurry."

Mr Eastlake said parts of the plant were still operating and a number of workers would also be engaged in the huge clean-up, but some 500 meat workers would still be left having nothing for them to do.

He understood Work and Income had decided normal stand-down periods would apply to affected workers. Each person would be assessed on an individual basis.

"It's certainly not a bad outcome, given the seriousness of the fire."

Mr Cuff said with the anticipated restart to slaughtering within four weeks, "minimal disruption" to processing was expected.

Suppliers to the Pukeuri plant should keep in touch with their livestock representatives.

Mr Cuff said the Alliance board was "very grateful" for the efforts of the Pukeuri plant rescue squad and Fire Service staff in containing the blaze.

The fire, which started in one of the plant's four further processing, or boning, rooms about 9.30am on Sunday took 10 fire appliances and about 85 firefighters until early evening to bring under control.

The Fire Service said intense heat and difficult access made it hard to fight. Mr Cuff said today the blaze had been generally confined within a three-storey concrete block building in the centre of the plant.

The damaged building contained amentities, further processing rooms and carcass chillers. Two of the further processing rooms had been destroyed and would not be available for the rest of this killing season.

The fire struck at a busy time for the Pukeuri plant, which had been processing about 10,500 sheep and lambs a day -- about 90 per cent of capacity.

- NZPA