Pan Pac cuts 20 jobs at Whirinaki mill – management and support roles lost

The Pan Pac Forest Products plant at Whirinaki, Napier in 2022. Photo / Warren Buckland

One of Hawke’s Bay’s biggest employers is set to shed up to 20 jobs.

The Pan Pac Forest Products site in Whirinaki, north along the coast from Napier, will lose management and support roles in a restructure.

Pan Pac managing director Tony Clifford said as was the case for many other businesses in the region, the last five years have been challenging.

“Cyclone Gabrielle caused the company net losses of over $200 million and put us out of operation for over a year,” he said.

Following Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023, Pan Pac’s Whirinaki site was left submerged in up to 2m-high floodwaters and had become completely unrecognisable.

Clifford said during this time the company was able to keep all of their 440 staff employed, before returning to full production in 2024.

“However, the business has faced ongoing challenging conditions since returning to full production, due to low international sales prices, high electricity prices, and market uncertainty,” he said.

To reduce costs, Clifford said, Pan Pac has been working with suppliers and contractors over the last 18 months to “contain or defer increases”.

“Unfortunately, the market is not showing any signs of improving in the short term and we need to reduce costs further through a restructure of the company’s support roles,” he said.

The restructure will affect approximately 20 of 200 management and support roles in Hawke’s Bay, but Clifford emphasised that no further reviews are pending.

He said where possible, Pan Pac would seek to find other roles within the organisation for impacted staff.

A spokesperson for First Union, which represent workers at the Pan Pac Whirinaki site, said these redundancies do not affect union members on the collective agreement but do affect “unfilled roles and workers on individual employment agreements”.

Clifford acknowledged it was a regrettable situation and one the company had spent time considering.

“However, we have to make some difficult decisions now to better position the business for recovery when market conditions improve,” he said.

“We are optimistic that trading conditions will improve and that Pan Pac will continue to be a major employer in Hawke’s Bay for a long time to come.”

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.