Redundancies at Taranaki bakery

Twenty-eight jobs are to be cut at Yarrows bakery in the Taranaki.

The job losses, at the Manaia factory near Hawera, were announced as part of restructuring to take place at factories in Sydney, Perth and Rotorua, along with Manaia, Yarrows chief executive Colin Pettigrew said.

The factory had been carrying excess staff for the last six months and lay-offs had been delayed for as long as possible, he told The Taranaki Daily News.

The New Zealand dollar had led to a 30 per cent increase in the cost to market of its products.

The news hit the workers hard and there were emotional scenes at the factory after the news was broken.

Staff had suffered months of uncertainty due to production of frozen dough products being down.

"It's pretty grim," said Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union lead organiser Wayne Ruscoe. "It's never a nice thing jobs going, there's simply no nice way to do this. There'll be $1m a year in wages sucked out of the local economy."

The affected workers will get a paid month's leave and there will be redundancy pay for those who had been with the company for more than a year.

Mr Pettigrew said staff had been offered positions at the Australian factories, where relocation facilities would be made available, but so far no one had taken up the offer.

- NZPA