Feilding Write Price to close

Feilding’s oldest supermarket Write Price is closing, leaving 35 people unemployed.

Foodstuffs North Island has confirmed the store that has greeted customers on Warwick St since 1981 will shut in October, and a bigger and better New World is earmarked as its replacement.

The franchise intends to relocate its New World on Fergusson St to a 1.3-hectare plot on the corner of Aorangi and Gladstone streets, originally intended for a Pak’n Save.

Foodstuffs North Island spokesman Torben Akel said 23 full-time and 12 part-time staff had been informed of the decision.

The company was attempting to negotiate an extension on its lease to retain staff until the opening of the Aorangi St New World, but the site of the long-awaited supermarket remains fenced off, with pampas grass the only thing growing behind the sturdy fences.

Akel said the Write Price building was ‘‘very’’ dated and required significant investment to bring it up to standard.

Unless an extension was granted, it would close on October 2 when the lease expired, he said.

Manawatu District Council mayor Helen Worboys said she knew some staff who worked at the supermarket personally and they were devastated.

She had been in contact with Foodstuffs and said they had told her of their hope to keep Write Price open until the New World was operational.

But long-term, she was concerned.

‘‘If the town is left with no supermarket that caters for lower income people, that’s a huge loss.’’

Worboys said in Levin, there was a Write Price and a New World.

‘‘If Levin can do it, why can’t Feilding?’’

She was also concerned that the closure would push residents to Pak’n Save in Palmerston North.

Akel said ‘‘an analysis of the demographics and projected population growth of the catchment indicates that the community is not large enough to sustain two of our supermarket businesses’’.

Foodstuffs was investigating whether it could relocate employees to its other stores and staff would be able to apply for roles at the new supermarket.