Manufacturer opts to sell up, stay put

A ‘‘for sale’’ sign sits outside a Dunedin manufacturing plant, but it signals the opposite of the common story of a New Zealand manufacturer closing to move overseas.

EPI Plastics’ factory in Bradford will continue to pump out plastic containers, bottles, toys and office supplies stamped with ‘‘New Zealand made’’ from the site, which the company will lease from a new owner.

EPI owner Norman Wood said he had kept his eye on China-made products but refused to fall to the temptation of its cheap manufacturing costs.

Instead, he had altered his product range to steer clear of foreign compe- tition. In response to supermarkets importing pre-packaged food, he decreased the amount of plastic bottles the company made.

EPI was once known for manufacturing a popular tricycle as well as kitchenware and gardening tools.

But Wood said he had to cull them from the company’s product range because consumers preferred to buy those items for cheaper prices from the likes of Kmart or online from Alibaba and AliExpress.

Products sold via online marketplaces or by import-reliant retailers did not carry the blue and red kiwi logo.

Despite shoppers increasingly buying competing foreign products, Wood said he was proud he had stayed a mostly New Zealand-made supplier.

New Zealanders still trusted locally made items, especially when it came to the safety of food containers and children’s toys, he said. ‘‘I am not sure if some of the other countries are as vigilant [on safety] … I have my certificate and I am proud to have it.’’

Half of the factory’s machines were automated, and he was making the most money he had in his 13 years of owning the company, Wood said.

But that came at a cost to staff. Previously, when EPI was making plastic products for large clients such as The Warehouse, Wood needed at least 12 workers on the floor at a time. He said he was creating truckloads of products but for next to no profit.

Two years on he makes a variety of products with only three full-time staff. He pays them twice as much as his former employees.

‘‘We have moved from 66 per cent of our work being for two or three customers, with only 500 accounts in total, to now having nearly 3000 accounts with no one customer being over 4 per cent of sales.’’

Wood has also started to make more custom plastic pieces for other manufacturers, such as wheels for a children’s toy. It was almost 20 per cent of his business and growing. ‘‘It is a good little area of profit.’’

Wood said he decided to sell his site because he was a business owner, not a property developer.

‘‘As long as we keep paying rent we are fine. It is always good to sell at a time when you do not need to.’’