Losing the town’s ‘life blood’
It’s been 30 years since the freezing works in the Taranaki town of Waitara shut its doors for the final time. Deena Coster lifts the lid on its past and looks at the site’s future.
For Johnston Noble, the grounds of Waitara’s old freezing works are his tu¯ rangawaewae – his place to stand.
Since 1960, the plant – in its various guises – has been his place of employment and effectively a second home.
‘‘I’ve always been dedicated to the meat industry.’’
His kinship with the Waitara freezing works, which has been a notable landmark in his hometown since 1881, saw him celebrate his 60th birthday there with colleagues, organising ha¯ ngı¯ to be delivered to the dining room.
He has such a strong connection to the place that he took it upon himself to organise Friday’s blessing of the inside of the Stafford St plant, which is now owned and operated by his current employer Anzco Foods.
‘‘It’s a spiritual thing for me as far as I am concerned,’’ he says.
He says the ceremony, performed by Reverend Albie Martin, will bring new energy to the place and get rid of any ghosts of the past in the process.
And it is undoubtedly a site which has been tainted by tragedy.
Over the decades three fires have swept through the plant, hundreds of people lost their livelihoods when redundancies began at the works in 1989 and its closure eight years later brought a small town to its financial knees.
Known as Borthwicks, Waitaki and then Affco, after its various owners,
the freezing works used to be a primary driver of the Waitara economy. In its heydey, it employed 1200 people, which is about a fifth of the town’s current population.
Infrastructure was also built around the plant, including roading and railway improvements, along with the construction of a wharf at the mouth of the Waitara river.
A job at the freezing works back
then was considered to be one you had for life. The plant was completely self- sufficient, employing its own carpenters, plumbers and engineers.
Historian and former freezing worker Graeme Duckett described the works as the ‘‘life blood of the town’’.
So when the first wave of redundancies hit in 1989, they cut deep. Duckett was one of 600 who found themselves out of work.
‘‘It shook the town. I think it was the horror that it was actually happening.’’
Before he got a job at Borthwicks in 1978, Duckett was a butcher earning about $60 a week. When he began at the works his pay packet went up immediately to $180-200.
After transferring to the boning floor, he would get between $200-300 a week in the hand and if he worked during the calving season he could sometimes pocket a massive $2200.
Duckett’s kept his payslips from that time.
‘‘I saved some of those because I knew I would never see that kind of money again,’’ he says.
Union pressures, company mismanagement, including losing contracts, and expectations to raise standards within the industry were all factors in the Waitara freezing works’ demise, Duckett says.
There was a lot of waste as well. One of the most shocking things for Duckett was the amount of theft which went on at the company.
Prime cuts of meat and other equipment went walkabouts on a regular basis, he says.
Duckett says he knows of some who built their houses on the back of what they pilfered from the works.
After leaving, Duckett went back to working in a butchery in the town before changing careers and moving into the demolition business.
He says some of his ex-workmates were not so lucky and never found work again, or died young.
‘‘There’s guys as young as 40 in the cemetery because they had nothing else. The works were all they knew. They had no hobbies, nothing.
‘‘When you worked for Borthwicks you thought you were set for life,’’ Duckett says.
The intrinsic role the freezing works played in the lives of its workers was illustrated through the editions of Smutt magazine, which Duckett and Wayne Birdling produced every month.
Its cartoons and sketches highlighted the exploits of the workers, sometimes taking the mickey out of people or making a point about someone’s behaviour.
Like any family unit, there was little you could get away with at the works without someone else finding out about it.
‘‘Some of it was borderline but everyone saw the funny side of it,’’ Duckett says of Smutt.
Pat Montgomerie says the freezing works were known as ‘‘the university’’ – the place where you got schooled in all the aspects of life.
He began his tenure at the works in 1953 and he ended up taking redundancy 44 years later, 24 months away from retirement.
Starting on the
beef and mutton chains, Montgomerie remembers the job to be physically demanding.
‘‘I remember having no trouble going to sleep at night. I was buggered.’’
Eventually, he worked his way up to a management role.
Bomb scares are one thing which stand out for Montgomerie when he looks back on his time at the works. In total, there were about 26 of them.
They all turned up to be prank calls, but it meant the whole plant had to
be evacuated and work came to a standstill.
‘‘An hour’s pay for everyone out on the footpath really added up,’’ he says.
The economic benefits the works provided to the town though were palpable.
‘‘The town did well when the works were going. It was brilliant,’’ Montgomerie says.
Income from freezing workers not only pumped money into the shopkeepers’ coffers, it also helped to prop up various community and sports clubs around the town, including league, rugby, rowing and softball.
That all changed when the works’ demise began. Not only did the money dry up, but people disappeared, leaving town to find work.
The fate of those erased from the payroll was always at the forefront of Kay Brunning’s mind as the redundancies cut a swathe through the company.
Everyone was in a state of shock when the job losses began, she says.
‘‘My biggest thought was what they were going to do.
‘‘I felt for a lot of other people. That was their livelihood and that was their life.’’
For years they enjoyed safe, stable employment, earning good money to support their families. ‘‘And then it was over.’’ Brunning spent 23 years at the works before she took voluntary redundancy. She spent much of her time there in the butchery shop as its head cashier.
‘‘It was so busy there,’’ she says. At the height of a day’s trading in the business, she says $20,000 could pass through the tills.
‘‘It was unbelievable.’’
For Brunning, the meat works was a place full of ‘‘comradeship, friendship and everything like that’’.
‘‘There were like 1000 guys there and I knew the lot of them,’’ she says.
‘‘I used to think it was a huge family.’’
Brunning recalls the time when becoming a freezing worker was a career goal, a pathway which would provide a job for life for the worker and even their own children.
‘‘That was just how it used to be.’’ For Noble, that’s how it still is. At 72, he is arguably one of New Zealand’s longest-serving meat workers.
During his career he has been made redundant twice but now works at Anzco Foods.
He was one of the original intake of about 15 employees to begin at the business when it first opened in 2005.
The award-winning operation turns chilled and frozen meats into gourmet products like salami, burger patties, jerky products and ham.
‘‘It was a big boost that it came to Waitara. I was quite happy about that,’’ Noble says.
About 210 people currently work at the site, which operates seven days a week. Of those, 160 are in the processing department, including Noble.
Seven years on after becoming eligible for his pension, it’s the love of the job which still gets him out of bed every morning.
‘‘I know the company (Anzco) has got a bright future while it is here,’’ he says.
He says the success of the industry is in the hands of those on the front line, whose toil and grind can help create a solid foundation for the next generation of workers.
‘‘I would be happy to see that happen.’’
Until then, Noble’s content to do what he can to contribute to the company’s fortunes. He says he knows there will be a time when he has to clock in for his final shift.
But for the veteran, there’s still more work to do.