Fletcher moves at Nelson

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32534, 18 February 1971, Page 1

Fletcher moves at Nelson

(From Our Own Reporter) NELSON, Feb. 17. By the end of March the Fletcher group of companies will have severed its direct business ties with Tahunanui, Nelson, where a few years ago it used to employ as many as 50 workers.

Nine joiners still employed by the Fletcher Timber Company at its Bolt Road joinery department, are now all that remain of the group’s building and timber supply activities at Bolt Road. They will go to new employment next month when Fletchers cease operations at the site. In the last three years, the

group has closed its building department (March 31, 1969), its timber yard (March 31, 1970) and its big hardware warehouse (about June, 1970) all of which were centred on the Bolt Road property.

At the end of last month, the manager of Timber Merchants, Ltd, in Nelson (Mr I. B. Laby) was transferred to Auckland, leaving only the joinery shop still working. The modem office block and big joinery shop have been sold to G. B. H. Bakeries Ltd, of Nelson, and the equally large hardware warehouse alongside has been leased to Griffin and Sons, Ltd, and is being used as a store.

The group’s major interest in Nelson began in 1961 when it bought out the old-esta-lished timber and building industry of J. D. and L. Robertson, Ltd, then carrying on

business from Hardy Streetpremises it had used since 1902. This old site was levelled and the Hardy Mall built on it by the Fletcher Development Company. The old Robertson firm moved into new premises in Bolt Road in 1966 and the name was retained until 1968 when it became part of Fletcher Merchants, Ltd. An Auckland spokesman for the Fletcher Group said yesterday that the change was part of a reorganisation of Fletchers’ merchandising throughout the country to meet the new demands of the builders’ supplies market. This involved closing a number of retail outlets and servicing building clients from central points. In the case of Nelson and Marlborough, builders would be supplied directly from the Fletcher sawmill at Hope.

The spokesman said the group still ran a mall in the centre of Nelson city and a steel and engineering plant at Port Nelson, and it had a substantial interest in the new sl.sm chip mill at Richmond.