Sealord has confirmed one of its three Nelson factories will cut 70 factory jobs and 30 contract workers will no longer be needed at the Wetfish factory.
The number of impacted people will depend on how many are able to be retrained and moved into other available roles either on land or at sea.
By redeploying employees and not filling existing vacancies, Sealord has reduced the number of office based people impacted to eleven.
Sealord General Manager Fishing, Doug Paulin, said that the decision to make changes due to the factory not being financially viable was sad but necessary for the long-term health of the business.
“This is a difficult time for our people and we are supporting them as much as we can.
“The factory will remain open and the focus will be on processing fresh fish for Australasia and frozen whole fish for the China market instead of frozen commodity products. This allows us to keep a number of our permanent Wetfish employees and also continue to offer seasonal work to more than 100 other people in the Nelson region,” said Paulin.
While Sealord has delivered a profit for the 2014 year ongoing challenges of rising costs, globally flat white fish pricing and a high exchange rate mean the focus on lower-value commodity products could not continue.
By running a smaller Wetfish operation focused on higher value products the company is focusing on the future and ensuring investment in Nelson continues and staffing levels are sustainable.
Work is beginning to finalise the redundancies and the last day of work for most factory staff is expected to be the 30th January 2015.
“Having an extended notice period was important to Sealord to ensure that employees weren’t made redundant just prior to Christmas and it also means employees have a longer period to secure other employment,” said Paulin.
The other factories and fishing crews are not affected by the change and additional frozen processing will take place on board Sealord’s vessel Rehua, which will no longer travel to Tasmania as part of its fishing plan.