A Pacific P9 logging truck, NZ Forest Products Ltd, in Tokoroa, 1969. Photo / Peter Geany
A Pacific P9 logging truck, NZ Forest Products Ltd, in Tokoroa, 1969. Photo / Peter Geany
Hundreds of former NZ Forest Products Ltd employees are set to gather for what is expected to be their final reunion.
More than 260 people will attend the event on the weekend of February 22 and 23 at the Tokoroa Club.
Former employees will travel from the Gold Coast, Auckland, Palmerston North and elsewhere.
Reunion committee member Graham Sheldrake said it was expected to be the last NZ Forest Products reunion.
“The people who have the drive [to organise it] are all getting elderly. I’m one of the younger ones and I’m 70,” Sheldrake told the Rotorua Daily Post.
Retired specialists in fields like logging, forestry (tree planting and silviculture), transport, engineering and workers from the Kinleith garage were invited.
An exclusive tour of the Kinleith Forest would show the former employees what had changed since they worked there last, Sheldrake said.
From the NZFP Kinleith garage reunion, October 1998 (Wally Koteka, incorrectly named in the third row, is actually Alan Haughey). Photo / Frank Povey
After serving his apprenticeship and working as a diesel mechanic for the NZFP garage, Sheldrake began contracting to NZFP in 1980.
“I got an opportunity to buy a truck so I did and started my own business.”
“Without NZ Forest Products, Tokoroa probably wouldn’t have been as big and prosperous as it has been.
“Without people working the mill there wouldn’t have been as many people living in Tokoroa,” he said.
“At one stage, I know we got to about 19,500 people living there, it was quite big in those days, you know, like for a small community middle town, it was nearly at city status.”
From the NZ Forest Products Tokoroa Facebook photo archive: Les Gilsenen at the 1962 Canterbury Show, Axemans Competition. Photo / Carl Smith
A legacy at Kinleith Forest
When Sheldrake retired in 2020 his son took over his business, Sheldrake Haulage Limited.
“We’ve been working in the same place, and we’ve lived in the same place all our lives,” Sheldrake said.
“Tokoroa’s been my home for a long while - my family still live there, both my kids live there and my grandchildren are all there - so the town means a lot to us,” he said.
When he retired Sheldridge was recognised for his work in the industry, and in 2020 was inducted into the NZ Road Transport Hall of Fame.
He said advancements in mechanisation had changed the industry.
“Especially in the forestry industry, it used to be a very manual sort of job, and there was always a lot of injuries and stuff like that.
“So if you could do the same job with a piece of machinery, and it took men off the ground that were getting cut with chainsaws or squashed legs under trees or things like that, you just went that way, didn’t you?
“The most important thing for us is that we all worked for one company years ago.”
“With the paper mill, sawmills and the forest at Tokoroa, and around that area like the Mamaku Ranges, [NZFP] was probably the main reason that Tokoroa exists really.
“They built people, they built houses, company houses, and to attract people to come to the town and get jobs.
“The whole region has benefitted from that mill.
“My life, my work life and my father’s work life have been centered around and associated with the forest and the mills that are there,” Sheldrake said.
Photo displays at the event would be positioned on Tokoroa Club hall walls, and a data show of old logging and trucking photos would run too.
Those who have not registered for the reunion can do so on the day.
It was announced on Friday about 230 workers will lose their jobs at Kinleith Mill in Tokoroa.Oji Fibre Solutions confirmed the news to workers at an open-air meeting on the mill’s grounds.
Aleyna Martinez is a multimedia journalist based in the Bay of Plenty. She moved to the region in 2024 and has previously reported in Wairarapa and at Pacific Media Network.
