SC honey factory to close
Comvita plans to close Pleasant Point’s honey factory but says the Hollands Honey brand will survive.
The honey company told the Horton St factory’s 12 staff on Tuesday it plans to shift its South Canterbury honey-packing operations to a site in Paengaroa in the Bay of Plenty next year.
Comvita chief executive Brett Hewlett said the Hollands Honey the factory produced from Central Otago and South Canterbury honey would still be produced using local honey, but in the North Island.
Comvita bought Timaru-based NZ Honey last year from The New Zealand Honey Producers Cooperative, which is in the process of winding up. Hewlett said at the time Comvita had told co-operative shareholders of its ‘‘genuine and very sincere’’ intentions to ‘‘rescue’’ the factory.
In hindsight, Comvita’s plans ‘‘probably delayed the inevitable’’. He said the facilities needed too much money spent on them, although they did meet required packing quality specifications. Tanks at the factory were secondhand when they were installed about 35 years ago, Hewlett said.
Poor honey crops leading to lower-than-predicted honey volumes passing through the factory also contributed to the decision, Hewlett said.
Huttons Honey co-owner Andrea Hutton said it was a shame to see the factory close.
Hutton, a former New Zealand Honey Producers Co-operative shareholder, voted against the Comvita deal.
She said it was too soon to say how the closure would affect her commercial decisions, but felt for the workers who would lose their jobs when operations wound down in February. Comvita said workers’ employment contracts would extend until then.
Geraldine beekeeper and cooperative director Peter Smyth said he did not think the decision would affect South Canterbury beekeepers ‘‘in the slightest’’.
Comvita will keep its procurement base and storage facilities in Timaru’s Washdyke industrial zone, and its Nelson propolis extraction site.
Hewlett said the company would also ‘‘re-launch’’ Hollands Honey with packaging resembling its original pottle designs.