Tachikawa sold, former workers find jobs

FILE

Some ex-workers back on bottom rung of industry

Tachikawa's Vaughan Rd property has been sold, but receivers won't reveal how much it went for.

Tenders on the property closed last week, following Tachikawa Forest Products Limited being put into receivership in October with the loss of 130 jobs.

A receiver's report issued in December showed the company owed $13 million.

Yesterday KordaMentha's Brendon Gibson confirmed to the Rotorua Daily Post that the property - comprising 8ha of land and more than 18,000sq m of buildings - had been sold through the tender process.

"We will now be working out what that means for the creditors."

Mr Gibson said while he couldn't say how much the property had sold for they had "good interest" in the property.

Meanwhile, First Union's Turei Heurea said a significant number of former Tachikawa employees he was working with had found jobs.

He worked with about 85 of the mill's 130 staff. Of those, 55 had either found work or gone into training. About 15 weren't currently looking for personal reasons, but he said he would continue to work with those still looking in a bid to find them employment.

While he said the number who had found jobs was "pretty good", he wasn't completely happy.

"I'd prefer to see them all in some type of work."

Mr Heurea said a lot had gone into a similar sort of work in the district.

However, some who had found work have had to go back to the bottom ranks in the sawmill industry, which was sad after they'd spent years working their way up at Tachikawa, he said.

"That's probably the hardest thing for me to hear, that they are on minimum wage or at the bottom again."

Mr Heurea said a lot of the workers he was dealing with had been at Tachikawa for several years. "Of the ones on my books, the least amount of time at Tachikawa was three years. A lot had given a lot of their prime years to the place."