KEY POINTS:
In a small factory in Glen Innes a tight-knit family is breaking up. Though tears have been shed there is resignation along with the sadness. The closure of the Shiseido factory is a sign of the times.
Some of the staff have worked together for 20 years and more; it's tough saying goodbye.
The Japanese owners are moving the production of the lipsticks and moisturisers abroad, in line with other companies who are axing jobs and taking their businesses to cheaper workforces offshore.
Soon, the Moisture Mist brand so popular with and made for New Zealand women will carry the label Made in Taiwan.
Shiseido is one of the smallest closures of a string of companies saying they have to go for economic reasons, the high dollar and falling exports among them.
Last month Fisher & Paykel announced a move from Dunedin to the much cheaper Mexico with the loss of 460 jobs. This week a meatworks in Dannevirke started talking to 466 staff about possible closure. Carter Holt Harvey confirmed this month that its Kopu sawmill near Thames will close, with the loss of 145 jobs.
Just 27 jobs will be lost at Shiseido and while the machinery is rumbling to a stop, the marketing arm will continue at the Glen Innes site.
For those 27 people who work the factory floor, though, the question is: what do we do now?
In a world where staff can become numbers, Shiseido is a shining example of kindness. The redundancy negotiations were smooth, the company organised counselling and prepared CVs for staff, which they have put on discs.
General manager Tatsuya Nagai came to head the company a year ago and is polite and welcoming.
He had wanted to keep the factory going but understands the need of head office in Japan to compete globally and make production more efficient, hence the decision announced last month to move production to the Taiwan factory.
Nagai explains that when manufacturing began here in 1977 cosmetic import duty was 50 per cent but over the years the duty has fallen to seven per cent.
This means cosmetics are much cheaper to import and the reason for making them here much less convincing.
He understands the nature of this group of workers, few of whom have less than 10 years with the company, and that they operate very much like an extended family.
"They are very loyal employees so that is why we treat them very importantly," he says.
The workers represent a melting pot of nationalities and most put a rosy face to their future. They bear no ill-will to a company which they say has treated them well and is helping as much as possible to find them new jobs.
We meet Laura German, originally from the Philippines, who in her 23 years with the company worked her way to the top and became manager.
She had stepped down last year with plans to move to America but was tracked down by Shiseido and brought back to handle the closure because she knows and cares so deeply for the staff.
German wears the makeup, knows what is in all the big white tubs of stored product, knows what every bit of machinery does and where every person being laid off is at in their search for another job.
She introduces everyone by name and blinks back tears when the talk turns to how hard the announcement of imminent closure has been on the staff.
Oh yes, she says, she has done a fair bit of crying too. More is to come.
We meet Cambodian women, some of them refugees, on the factory floor who patiently bottle potions, day after day. They don't speak much English but smile as they work.
In another room is Rawinnia Toetoe from Mangere. She sits at a small production line, dressed in the blue factory coverall with a hairnet and a face mask, gently hammering the plastic lids the product is squeezed through onto little plastic bottles.
When she has done her bit she places each bottle back on the conveyer belt and a Cambodian woman screws the bottle top in place.
Another worker has already squirted the product inside. This team will fill 1705 of these bottles. They are nearly finished, the order has taken just over two hours.
Toetoe loves life on the factory floor. You never get bored, she says. Each day is a different potion.
She cracks a joke and the others burst into laughter. When her photo is taken and the photographer asks her name, quick as a flash she says: "Rachel Hunter."
"Ah, I thought I recognised you," he says. Everyone cracks up once more.
Though she is a young mum of two small children, Toetoe says she is not worried about finding work. She will do a course if she has to and her own mum will help her through.
Our tour continues past large equipment which will be put up for auction and we find James Powell, compounder. Powell began working here roughly the same time as German.
He was a young man in his early 20s and Shiseido was his first proper job. He says the announcement was a shock - but not a total shock. The workers understand the economic reasons behind the decision, but still, it's very hard.
As a compounder, which means mixing cosmetics ingredients much like a chef, he thinks he will find another job easily enough.
Turn a corner and we find the room where they press the powders. Another large and intricate-looking piece of equipment sits unattended.
Jason Tubby tells us 10 minutes earlier and we would have seen it in action. "The powder goes in here," he points, "drops into this hole, goes round here where it gets pressed, pops out here where a worker sits waiting who then packs it in a compact".
Tubby says he has plans for the future and that the company is helping him realise them, but he can't really say what they are.
He does say the company has been great.
"They're trying their best to look after everybody and sort everybody out into other positions. I think it's the Japanese way. They're caring, they want to help as much as they can."
Despite the company's help and respect for their workers, leaving is not easy.
Production supervisor Linda Gordine is in her early 50s and looks tired today. This has been a tough time and an emotional one, she says.
She has to find another job quickly because she has a mortgage to pay. Losing a job you have held for 20 years is harsh, especially when mortgage rates are so high, as are petrol and food costs.
Gordine is worried. It's daunting to start over, especially at her age, competing with young things with degrees entering the workforce.
She stayed with this company so long because she enjoyed it, she explains.
"I've learnt a lot. I've worked my way up to the position I'm in. I started as what they called a 'person Friday'. I didn't even know what the job was, just basically you were doing the grunt work."
She doesn't want to have to start over again as a person Friday.
Pat Abercrombie is in the office. She says she is one of the lucky ones. She has worked at the company 17 years and though her position ordering ingredients is being disestablished, she will return to work part-time in other roles.
She thinks the workers know how lucky they are to have held their jobs for so long, given other big cosmetics companies moved out 10 to 15 years ago.
It will be strange coming back when the factory is closed and the laughter and friendly faces have disappeared: "The emptiness will be terrible."
At the end of the tour, though it has been a risk letting a journalist through the doors, the Shiseido team is grateful for the visit.
It has been a pleasure and an honour, they have said. You get the feeling that though the closure is about hard economics, the visit is about the chronicling of a family who have laughed, cried and shared together over many years - and who, at the end of June, will do so again, one last time.
