KEY POINTS:
A Palmerston North-based clothing manufacturer that prided itself on surviving all the changes the apparel industry has been through has gone under.
Everest Fashions has told staff the company will close on Friday with the loss of 28 jobs.
The National Distribution Workers union said LWR-owned Beardsley Pearce in Levin is also closing, bringing the total jobs lost in clothing manufacturing in central North Island to 40.
These closures follow hard on the heels of the closures of the Godfrey Hirst-owned Feltex plants in Foxton and Feilding which saw around 160 lose their jobs.
The Godfrey Hirst Dannevirke mill has recently laid off 12 workers and Rembrandt Suits in Naenae has laid off around 20 staff, said NDU president Robert Reid said.
Everest Fashions owner Courtney Darby said his company could no longer compete with cheap imports from China.
He said the increase in holiday leave and minimum pay under the Labour-led Government had increased labour costs.
"Our staff deserved to be paid much more than we were able to pay them. They are skilled workers and they were being paid an unskilled wage because that was the level we were forced to produce at. But even then it is too much of a gap between our labour costs and China," he said.
He said Everest was a survivor in the apparel industry as a "cut, make and trim" operator which makes up garments for others.
He said the slowing in the economy had had only a fractional impact compared to the issue of cheap imports.
"We thought we were the surviving company. Seventy five per cent of the others have gone," he said.
- NZPA
