Fewer Kinleith staff work harder to break records

Kinleith pulp and paper mill broke 16 production records last year with 160 fewer staff than it had when the original records were set two years earlier.

The performance gave South Waikato district and the mill's major service town, Tokoroa, a huge lift after years of heartbreak, said Mayor Neil Sinclair.

But a spokesman for the unions on site, Graham Holmes, said workers found it hard to explain how the records were set "because nothing's really changed".

Last year, the Kinleith mill produced 581,704 tonnes of market pulp and containerboard - more than 49,000 tonnes more than in 2002.

Then the mill employed 770 people. Now it has 610 working there following the company's controversial restructuring plan two years ago.

- NZPA