Plant expands with more jobs created

Lowe Corporation managing director Andy Lowe says the company is expanding its Hastings plant to cope with 25 per cent more hides next season, requiring up to 40 new workers. Photo / Paul Taylor

A $5million investment during the next two years will keep Lowe Corp at the forefront of job creation in Hawke's Bay.

Over the past 18 months about 50 new jobs have been created in Hawke's Bay by the country's largest privately owned byproduct processor of hides, pelts and protein recycling.

It is expanding its Hastings hide-processing to allow for a 25 per cent increase in hides for the next season, requiring up to 40 new workers.

Lowe Corporation managing director Andy Lowe said the jobs would be permanent but seasonal in nature, following the meat works cycles.

Chinese leather imports from the 1990s forced the New Zealand industry into providing just cured hides but Mr Lowe said the company was looking at further processing.

Lowe Corp has interests in other agri-business companies, property and farming. In 2014 it employed about 400 people in its 10 New Zealand plants, 250 in Hawke's Bay.

The Hastings tannery is one of the biggest hide processing plants in the country, with computerised processes enabling greater throughput.

The company is a part owner of Tomoana Pelt Processors, a local fellmongery that handles several million skins annually.

In 2013 Lowe Corp bought Silver Fern Farms' Shannon fellmongery, creating 65 new jobs for Hawke's Bay.

In 2014 it bought Silver Fern Farms' Ahuriri plant, part of a wider arrangement in which Lowe Corporation processes most of Silver Fern Farm's North Island hides and rendering material.

Lowe Corp has a 49.9 per cent stake in sheep renderer Hawke's Bay Protein, which exports high-quality meal to pet-food manufacturers.

Mr Lowe said the strong company growth was not difficult to manage, just a process of "continual improvement".

Lowe Corp is one of many businesses hiring, as shown by the region again leading the ANZ New Zealand Job Ads survey.

For the three month average to February Hawke's Bay job ads were up 17.7 per cent year-on-year ahead of Auckland on 7 per cent.

In Canterbury, which has vacuumed up many new jobs for the post-earthquake restructure, job ads were down 16.5 per cent.

Nationally job advertising rose a seasonally-adjusted 0.9 per cent in February after a 2.9 per cent fall the previous month.

Compared with the same period last year job ads were up 0.4 per cent.