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A Timaru wool mill has announced it is closing its doors next month and 34 employees will be made redundant - the result of a global downturn in the wool market.
Chargeurs New Zealand general manager Roger O'Brien told company staff on Monday that unless a proposal to save the business came forward within seven days, the mill would close on November 7.
"We have done what we can to hold on to the mill and for the past three months, two of us have looked at all sorts of restructuring, but we just could not get the figures to work," Mr O'Brien told the Timaru Herald.
"It has been very hard looking the staff in the eye these last few months.
"All that will be left is the Christchurch office of a wool buyer, accountant and an office girl, and me left in Timaru for the meantime.
"I never ever want to go through this again."
A staff member emailed him and said it was like losing a part of their history and their own family.
"That summed up exactly how it felt and it really hit me. It is not due to a lack of effort or competence that this is happening, it is part of a worldwide recession in the industry.
"Miracles do happen but it is going to take a bloody big miracle for the mill to survive."
Chargeurs is a French company and the Timaru plant the only top-making mill in New Zealand.
Worldwide demand for the wool had been falling for the past three years, Mr O'Brien said.
To keep the mill open the company needed a cash injection of about $20 million "and it is just not feasible".
"Our best year we put through 3100 tonnes. This year we won't even make 1000 tonnes.
The 40-year-old company was previously known as Alliance Textile Top Making and NZ Tops. In 1994 Chargeurs became a part owner with Alliance before becoming the outright owner in 2000.
- NZPA
