Tannery and processing plant to close
PPCS, which exports around a third of New Zealand’s sheep meat and beef and around half of New Zealand’s venison, has announced plans to close its Te Kauwhata venison processing facility and its Balclutha-based Windward lambskin tannery.
Speaking on the planned closure of the Windward site next month, which processes a range of lambskin products including floor rugs, infant care products and car seat covers CEO Keith Cooper said, “Overseas competition has seen the consolidation and closure of several New Zealand- based wool tanneries in recent years which has seen New Zealand lambskins being processed into finished products in countries with low labour costs, particularly China and Thailand. Globally, lambskin production is dominated by countries with very large national sheep flocks, primarily for meat consumption. Those countries must then find markets for the large volumes of lambskins surplus to their domestic requirements. China alone has a national flock of 171 million sheep and India and Iran each have around 50-60 million head.” He added, “Regardless of the future of Windward, PPCS will continue to export lamb pelts and woolly skins for which offshore demand remains.”
The Windward operation consists of a tannery co-located at PPCS’ Finegand processing facility which employs 11 staff, and a finishing factory in Balclutha which employs 14 staff.
?According to Mr Cooper, the proposal to close the venison processing facility, which employs 35 staff, is based on a trend of declining deer numbers and increasing North Island venison processing capacity. He said, “According to Deer Industry New Zealand, the number of deer available for venison processing is expected to drop by 35% in the next four years from 736,000 in 2006 to 479,000 by 2009. The decrease in deer population in the Waikato area has been more pronounced than the national trend as deer farms are converted to alternate land uses.”
PPCS owns 25 processing plants and employs about 9,000 staff in the peak of the processing season.
