Kawerau's Tasman Mill closure no surprise but still a 'feeling of loss'

Friday, 11 June 2021

Clifton McKenzie is taking a gap year.

At the age of 62, after spending the past 45 years of his life working at the Tasman Mill in Kawerau, McKenzie got some news this week that cleared his calendar for the near future.

“I was hoping when I left here when I was 65 the mill would still be going, but it’s caught up with us. It’s a sad day.”

He was 17 years old and straight out of school when he joined the Tasman paper and pulp mill, which Norwegian-based owner Norske Skog announced this week would be closing after 66 years.

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**

McKenzie is one of about 160 people who are employed at the mill and are being made redundant. They will receive full redundancy entitlements.

“I feel sorry for the younger workers now, who are just coming out into the workforce, who now have to go find other jobs,” McKenzie said, sitting at his dining room table in his Kawerau home yesterday, his hi-vis Norske Skog work shirts drying on the washing line outside.

When McKenzie first joined the mill, starting at the very bottom, it had three paper machines. As he was promoted and worked his way up in the company, one by one those machines were shut down. The first in 2006 and the second in 2013. Each time, friends and colleagues were laid off.

By June 30, just over a couple of weeks from now, the third and final paper machine will be shut down.

“It is sad. It’s going to be a sad day for the community and the people at work,” McKenzie said.

“It’s a very big family.”

McKenzie (Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa, Ngāpuhi) is from a big family in Northland, he has seven brothers and three sisters. Two of those brothers have also worked at the mill.

One of them, Grant, is still there. He has also been there for close to 40 years.

McKenzie said a lot of the guys at work, including his brother, are now wondering what they will do next. He counts himself as one of the lucky ones, to be so close to retirement.

McKenzie was also fortunate to be at the mill during some of the golden years, when there were hundreds of workers, social clubs, fun trips away.

He said he’s met a lot of people during his stint, and made a lot of friends. They’ve been through strikes together, chatted over coffee in the smoko room, partied on weekends.

For someone who has never had children and who has been single his whole life, those connections have meant a lot to McKenzie.

“Forty-five years is a long time, but I’ve loved the company, and I’ve loved working here.”

Norske Skog’s announcement this week that it would be selling the Tasman Mill’s assets and stopping production by the end of the month didn’t come as a complete surprise to the workers at the mill, or even most of the people around Kawerau, a town in the eastern Bay of Plenty with a population of about 7500.

The closure follows a strategic review that began at the mill last September 2020. Speak to anyone around town, and they will tell you there’s been speculation about the future of the mill for many years.

Norske Skog regional president Eric Luck said the company would work with employees and their union representatives on the implementation plan for the closure of the mill, with the aim of making the process as smooth as possible.

Staff would be provided with counselling and outplacement services.

Luck said the company wanted to acknowledge everyone who had worked at and for the mill over the past 66 years.

“It has certainly been an important contributor to the local and national economy,” he said.

The Tasman Mill commenced newsprint production in 1955 and has produced more than 15 million of tonnes of paper.

Most staff members will finish up in mid-July once a clean-up has been completed at the site.

Bruce Habgood, 56, has worked at Tasman Mill for more than 39 years. He started there as an apprentice and later secured a permanent job in maintenance.

Habgood, one of the on-site E tū union delegates, said despite the mill closure being on the cards for many years, “there’s still that feeling of loss”.

“And I think most employees in the mill are feeling a sense of mourning, because it has been a good place to work. It's been a good employer. It’s created opportunities for so many people, whether it’s been through apprenticeships or other ongoing training that they just wouldn’t have had exposure to elsewhere.”

He said there had been multiple generations of families who had worked at the mill, “so it's been a huge, huge part of people’s lives”.

“And unfortunately for some people, because they’re of a certain age or a certain skill set, they may not get the opportunity to ever work again.”

Habgood said Kawerau, like many towns in regional New Zealand, grew around the industry that sprang up there.

“But when the industry goes, well, the community is still there but has no longer got the same benefit.”

He said a lot of people are hoping that something else “rises from these ashes” – some other form of manufacturing that can offer employment to the locals.

Habgood said there is a huge sense of loss in knowing the opportunities and experiences you’ve had, aren’t going to be available for the next generation.

“And that’s probably the thing that’s most gutting,” he said.

“When you’ve been doing the same thing and working with the same sort of people for so long, and doing something that’s more than just a job, it’s something that you really enjoy – even though, like any job, there’s the good and the bad, it becomes part of you.”

Tane Phillips, 58, worked at the mill for 27 years. His father worked there before he did.

When the second paper machine was shut down, Phillips left and became the secretary of the Pulp and Paper Workers Union, which represents about 85 of the workers being made redundant.

He said there was still shock with this week’s announcement.

“The average age is 52 on that site. A lot them have never worked anywhere else, really. So there was still a bit of shock that the call had been made.”

The redundancy payments being confirmed alleviated a lot of the fear the workers had, he said.

Phillips said many of the workers have been there 40-45 years. One of the men has done 54 years.

“The mill fed a lot of families in the eastern Bay of Plenty,” he said.

“It is sad. It is really sad about the mill closing. And I think about the people more than the buildings. It’s about the people and there’s been some real good times at that mill for our whānau.”

The closure of the mill is also expected to have an impact on contractors and businesses in Kawerau that provide services and products to Norske Skog, like the Sequal Lumber mill.

Norske Skog is Sequal Lumber’s biggest customer, buying its residues to make paper and wood pellets.

Sequal Lumber executive director David Turner found out about the closure on Wednesday night. He said while it wasn’t so much a surprise, “the reality hits home now”.

“We have to fill that gap. Obviously it will have an impact on our business, but we're confident that we can fill that void. We’ve obviously seen the risk of this happening, and we’ve made appropriate adjustments.”

Turner said he had spoken to the management team at Tasman Mill, who were “gutted”.

“They really did try their best to present a viable pathway forward, they feel a deep sense of obligation to the community and the people that they employ. But at the end of the day they couldn’t make it work.”

Kawerau mayor Malcolm Campbell said while the closure came as no surprise to many in the town, “our hearts go out to the 160 people that have actually lost their jobs”.

“Because whether you were ready for retirement or not, it’s still not a nice thing to happen.”

He said it was important those people had access to wraparound services, as well as help to move on into future employment.

The council would be playing a support role with that, Campbell said.

He said about 25 per cent to 30 per cent of workers at the Norske Skog Tasman Mill live in Kawerau, the rest live in the surrounding region and in towns like Whakatāne.

Campbell said Norske Skog was a “significant ratepayer” for Kawerau and years ago was “the biggest ratepayer”.

He said losing a significant ratepayer like that would have an ongoing effect, but how big an effect remained to be seen.

“We’re just doing some number crunching at the present,” he said.

Campbell said there could possibly be a rates rise as a result of the Norske Skog exit.

“The effect won’t be quite as dramatic as it would have been 20 years ago, obviously, but nonetheless, if they just disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, it would be around about a 12 per cent rate increase.”

However, that was all still a bit of an unknown, he said, while they waited to see what would happen with the selling off of Norske Skog’s assets.

Ultimately, Campbell said he was optimistic about the future and was confident Kawerau would overcome this setback and keep moving forward.

“We’re resilient people.”

Clifton McKenzie certainly is.

He said he’s had family members phoning him this week checking that he’s okay, asking about his frame of mind, and his reply has been that he already knows what he’s going to do next.

First, he’s organising a big farewell party for him and his colleagues. The list of attendees is growing by the day, with past and present mill workers and even a few of the bosses expected to attend.

Then McKenzie plans to take “a gap year”.

“I’m taking mine at the end. I didn’t go to varsity, but I want to go to school. I want to take a year off and go to school and learn te reo,” he said.

He started te reo Māori classes at the beginning of this year. Now he can dedicate more time to it. He plans to eventually move back up north.

“I want to go home to help our own people at the marae up there.”

After 45 years working and living in Kawerau, the next stage of McKenzie’s life is about to begin.

“It will be a slow journey, I’m not going to rush into anything.”