The Pan Pac Whirinaki site the day after Cyclone Gabrielle.
The Pan Pac Whirinaki site the day after Cyclone Gabrielle.
After Cyclone Gabrielle ripped through Hawke’s Bay in February 2023, Pan Pac Forest Products’ Whirinaki site was left submerged in up to 2-metre-high floodwaters and completely unrecognisable.
Pan Pac managing director Tony Clifford said he realised they had a “marathon in front of us, not even a 10k run”.
“The water came over our stopbank system by about 750mm. The stopbanks didn’t fail, the water just came right over the top,” Clifford said.
Pan Pac staff cleaning out silt from the site's security building.
The cyclone washed 1.8 to 2m of silt and water through the entire site, flooding the electrical systems, power distribution systems and control systems.
For Pan Pac, the electrical work has been the biggest repair job in both time and cost. Clifford said just for the engineering cost the company is facing a repair bill of $150 million, and 12 months on it has spent close to $100m of that.
He added the $100m has largely been on plant recovery “as at this stage we haven’t started recovering any of our main administration office building, which will be done in the next 18 months”.
The flood aftermath inside one of Pan Pac's electrical rooms, showing how high the floodwaters reached.
Pan Pan had its chip mill up and running in August and September last year, and in January this year it got the sawmill running at about 50 per cent capacity. The company hasn’t been able to reactivate all of the kilns that dry the wood after it’s been through the sawmill.
More kilns are set to be up and running in a few weeks, with the hope Pan Pac will process a larger volume of wood through the sawmill.
Pan Pac's reliability engineer Aaron Harwood said everyone was excited when the first log went through the sawmill in its return to service after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Paul Taylor
To get to this point, Pan Pac “recognises the progress that has been done so far and the contribution by thousands right across Hawke’s Bay and New Zealand”, Clifford said.
As one of Hawke’s Bay’s biggest employers, Pan Pac’s recovery was aided by the creation of a list of its employees’ skill matrix, and where the employees could help.
Along with finding jobs for everyone, Pan Pac was creating job certainty as “staff were uncertain in the early stages when they came into the site and saw all the damage. We did our best to create certainty when there was mostly uncertainty, which helped with morale,” Clifford said.
“Once people knew they had a job and it wasn’t at risk, that created a much higher degree of comfort.”
Many Pan Pac employees come from trade backgrounds or had skills that were helpful to the recovery on-site.
Chris Bewick and Ryan Powell oversee the secondary operations tier while operations manager Phil Beamish White, Kerry Dash and Tony O’Keefe watch the new log in-feed via operational cameras. Photo / Paul Taylor
Work in the first few months was limited to moving silt out of buildings, factories and off roads, but after that people who had specialist skills were put to work where they could best help. If staff didn’t have a particular trade skill they were still able to help with general work or labouring.
“We have had all of our operators involved heavily with the electrical reticulation, none of the specialist stuff of course, just pulling out the damaged cables and pulling in the new cables, helping out in that way, while others have been helping with building, painting, gib-stopping ... you name it, our staff have helped where they can,” Clifford said.
While the Pan Pac staff have been chipping in, the managing director said that has only provided a portion of the labour required, with the vast majority of work being carried out by contractors.
“On a peak day of recovery in September or October there would be more than 800 people on the Pan Pac site,” Clifford said.
A high-stacker loader unloading a logging truck in the log yard at Pan Pac. The neatly stacked logs are destined for the sawmill, whereas the log pile is bound for the chip mill. Photo / Paul Taylor
The managing director added, “I really can’t acknowledge enough the contribution from our employees and contractors and wider stakeholders.”
Pan Pac’s next major milestone is getting the pulp mill up and running, which isn’t expected to be until March and it won’t regain full capacity until November.
Clifford said that on reflection, “I want to emphasise we didn’t have any loss of life and fortunately everything we have been faced with can be solved with time and money. That hasn’t been the case with other people and the things they have been facing.
“While our numbers are big and have had a significant impact on the business, we recognise there have been others in the community that have been impacted in other ways that have been more severe.”
Maddisyn Jeffares became the editor of the Hawke’s Bay community papers Hastings Leader and Napier Courier in 2023 after writing at the Hastings Leader for almost a year. She has been a reporter with NZME for almost three years and has a strong focus on what’s going on in communities, good and bad, big and small. Email news tips to her at: maddisyn.jeffarea@nzme.co.nz.
