Waipukurau job hunters at expo

Mr Apple shift manager Renee Makea providing information at last week's seasonal employment expo at EIT's CHB Learning Centre.

CHB job hunters of all ages had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with staff from two of the district's largest seasonal employers at a jobs expo last Tuesday.

Held at EIT's CHB Learning Centre in Waipukurau and coordinated by the Connecting for Youth Employment (CYE) Trust, the two-hour seasonal employment expo was supported by the Mayors' Taskforce for Jobs and funded by employers, Silver Ferns and Mr Apple.

Job seekers lined up to fill in job application forms and chat with senior representatives from both companies, who are looking to fill hundreds of seasonal jobs for their peak seasons during the summer months.

CYE trustee and CHB district councillor Kelly Annand said seasonal employment was vital to the CHB economy and many locals relied on the summer jobs at the meatworks, orchards and packhouses, including university students.

"They've often got to pay for their [uni] accommodation costs for the following year and it enables them to contribute to the household when they come back for holidays, and takes a bit of pressure off mum and dad at home," she said.

Silver Ferns Takapau plant manager Allan Poy was busy during the expo taking photocopies of IDs to go with the application forms filled in by prospective candidates.

He said during peak season from November to January, his plant employed up to 1000 people.

"So we are probably looking to employ 220 new staff from now through until January," said Mr Poy. A large percentage of his seasonal workforce were university students at home for the holidays, he said.

"Last year we probably employed around 80 university students. Some of them have been coming back for three, four years and it works really well for us.

"Our third chain - which is on when peak season is on - is really run around the university holidays. Without those students we probably wouldn't be able to man it, to be honest," he said.

Mr Apple shift manager Renee Makea said the apple producer had eight orchards in and around CHB, and provided employment opportunities for up to seven months of the year.

"We are just getting the word out there that we are starting recruiting for the post-harvest jobs for early next year, but for the orchard jobs, we are taking people now for thinning season and then also the picking season."

She said the impending thinning season would start by next month, followed by fruit-picking jobs, and then the post-harvest jobs in the packhouses which could run all the way from February through to July.

Ms Makea said she fielded lots of enquiries at the expo, mainly about the forklift training programme the company provided to suitable candidates.