KEY POINTS:
Click Clack chief executive John Heng has hit back at Prime Minister Helen Clark's "unhelpful" suggestion that only low-end manufacturing operations are being forced to relocate offshore due to difficult economic conditions.
Clark said at the weekend Fisher & Paykel Appliance's decision to move some of its washing machine and clothes dryer production to Thailand at the cost of 350 jobs was the "way of the world", adding that the future of manufacturing here lay in design, R&D and niche products.
But Heng said on the sidelines of the Better by Design industry summit in Auckland that it was not just the "low-end" parts of the manufacturing sector that were feeling the heat from the high currency.
Heng, whose company was forced to take its tool design to China due to the high dollar after spending $6.8 million on design and R&D over four years here, said he was "annoyed about one-size-fits-all comments coming out of the Beehive".
"Those people in that area no longer work for us, those skills are irreplaceable. It takes 10 minutes to get rid of a skill but you don't replace it ever," he said.
"These comments you should all be in China or India are not helpful to anyone but, more importantly, they're not helpful to the workforce that I've had to make redundant."
Palmerston North-based Click Clack, whose range of products include brushes and storage containers, exports between 85 per cent and 90 per cent of production to more than 60 countries. It employs about 280 people, 72 of whom will be affected when the firm closes its Christchurch plant and moves some work overseas.
Click Clack had held on despite the appreciation of the dollar during the past five years but was forced to get rid of 82 jobs in 2 1/2 years. "It got to the stage we couldn't win any longer," Heng said.
"It really annoys me that people who have been so loyal and have been good workers have now got to hear a politician tell them well blame the company they shouldn't have been here anyway. Design is only one component. We've got to have a stable economy. A non-volatile situation that allows us to be locked in the same as the Chinese are to the United States. We need that - we can't stand alone with a ridiculously high interest rate and speculators working every night as screen jockeys buying or selling our currency."
Heng said he had been warning about the situation getting out of hand for the past four years. "All the signals were there but, because we had a boom on at the time, we just let it happen.
"I think it's too late for [Finance Minister Michael Cullen and Clark] to do anything now but they should be looking at the fact that what has caused this issue is a high dollar.
"I just want them to recognise the fact that this could be more serious than they are making out."
Bruce Goldsworthy, of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, said the idea this country should focus on design was "a bit of a fallacy. They thought that design was going to be the saviour of the country. It really hasn't been."
