Coast factory to close

Press, 13 November 1981, Page 2

Coast factory to close

The West Coast's only surviving soft drink factory, Grogans and Blackmores Cordials, Ltd, Greymouth, will close at the end of this year, bringing to an end a name which had its roots in the gold rush era of the 1860 s. The company is a wholly Owned subsidiary of Ballins Industries, Ltd, which will retain the warehouse in Prestons Road with its staff and supply West Coast soft drink outlets from Christchurch. The bottles have carried Ballins or other Ballins Industries subsidiary company trade names Since the factory was taken over in 1976. Ballins first acquired substantial shares in 1972. Mr G. P. Mensforth, gen-

eral manager of Southern Bottlers, Ltd, which is also a subsidiary of Ballins Industries, said that the soft drink bottling machinery at the factory was installed in 1947 and if the plant was to keep bottling it would need to be replaced with new machinery. But the plant could supply all the Coast supplies by running for only a third of the year, and if new machinery was installed it would cost more than $500,000 and produce the whole year’s supply in six weeks. The closing of the bottling plant will put four workers out of a job, but Mr Mensforth said that one would be retained in the warehouse and the other three would be offered

alternative employment at the company's Chapmans Road site. Three or four part-time workers will also lose their jobs. Mr Mensforth said that when he told the workers about the planned closing he told them that Ballins would help with removal and other expenses if any decided to transfer to Christchurch. The workers, if they become redundant, will. be offered severance pay in line with a Ballins redundancy agreement made in Masterton 18 months ago, but the secretary of the Allied

Liquor Trades Union, Mr C. K. Glendening, said from Auckland yesterday that the union was not negotiating a redundancy settlement. It wanted the factory to keep bottling and the jobs to be retained in Greymouth. Mr Glendening said that Mr Mensforth’s predecessor had said that the factory would not close. It was “not good enough” for Ballins to change its mind. Mr Mensforth said that he knew nothing of any agreement to keep the plant open. There had never been any doubt that the factory would have to close some time.