KEY POINTS:
Yesterday was not the time for Gary Paykel to stay home from the business his father Maurice co-founded in Auckland nearly 75 years ago.
Although Mr Paykel's chairmanship of what has become a multinational company no longer extends to day-to-day operations, there was no way the loss of 430 jobs in Dunedin as part of the relocation of three factories to as many different countries could keep him away from the coal-face.
"It was a very hard day," he said last night from his office at the East Tamaki headquarters of Fisher & Paykel Appliances, which his father formed in 1934 with Sir Woolf Fisher and where he started work aged 18 in 1960 by sweeping factory floors and doing odd jobs.
"My emotions are obviously with the people in Dunedin, and also the other people here [East Tamaki] in our laundry division who didn't have a job after Christmas," he said.
"I've worked with so many of them - some are second- or third-generation like myself - so my feelings are very much with them, some of the most wonderful people you could ever work with."
Even so, Mr Paykel said there was no way he could or would have stood against what he and his board considered the best interests of the company and its shareholders.
"This was a decision that had to be taken - the whole business is so compelling, there's just no room for any other decision."
Mr Paykel said the company had watched manufacturing costs in New Zealand creeping up in the past decade in comparison with other countries where its competitors were operating.
"So it has been a long, slow process and none of it, of course, is what we wanted to happen.
We've stayed here in New Zealand, I think, for longer than perhaps we should have."
Having said that, he believed yesterday's announcements would leave the company in the best condition to keep employing its 1600 staff remaining in New Zealand, including those of its refrigeration division, its call centres and its customer "aftercare" operations.
He acknowledged that the last of the Paykel dynasty working at ground level for the company had become part of the overseas exodus.
His son Andrew Paykel heads the company's operations in Thailand, where an 18,000sq m factory has be developed since August to produce clothes-dryers, washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators for export back to New Zealand as well as to Australia and Asia.
