Coca-Cola to repay $7.2 million
Coca-Cola Amatil NZ will pay back its $7.2 million wage subsidy, the company announced yesterday.
Coca-Cola Amatil provided an update to the Australian stockmarket, indicating a strong 2020 performance in New Zealand despite a more than 30 per cent drop in revenue over the four-week lockdown.
Chris Litchfield, managing director of Amatil NZ, said 2020 was a difficult year, particularly at the beginning of the second quarter.
‘‘The wage subsidy came at a critical time and gave us the security to keep our people employed and paid in full,’’ he said.
‘‘The once-in-a-generation pandemic created unique challenges to Amatil’s staff and customers, with many customers closing during one or both lockdowns,’’ he said.
However, the company was able to recover enough to allow it to repay the subsidy, he said.
As of mid-December, the Ministry of Social Development had been repaid $536.4m by businesses that claimed the Covid-19 relief wage subsidy earlier in the year. The announcement from Coca-Cola Amatil followed similar announcements from The Warehouse, Briscoe Group, and retirement home providers Summerset and Ryman Healthcare.
However, Michael Hill International has declined to repay the millions it received in wage subsidy. The jewellery chain has said it was impacted severely by Covid-19, with the temporary closure of all its stores leading to an estimated A$80m of lost revenue and an 80 per cent slump in last year’s after-tax profit to A$3.1m.
‘‘They really needed to have those wage subsidies,’’ a spokesman said in January. ‘‘They have done the right thing by passing it through completely to the team and then when they were not eligible, they self-funded a wage subsidy to support the team, so I think they feel they have done enough.’’
Construction giant Fletcher Building said ongoing uncertainty from the pandemic meant it would not repay its $68m wage subsidy.