Motueka puts on brave face

Press, 26 July 1989, Page 5

Motueka puts on brave face

PA Wellington Motueka put a brave face on W. D. and H. 0. Wills’s announcement yesterday it was ending more than 60 years of buying tobacco from the district.

The decision will remove $4 million from the local economy and worse may be yet to come with Rothmans of Pall Mall reported to be planning a 20 per cent cut in its Motueka tobacco purchases.

Wills, with 25 per cent of the New Zealand cigarette market, has 25 Motueka growers contracted to grow for it. The Motueka District Businessmen’s Association president, Mr Stuart Kerr, said he did not believe the Wills pull-out would greatly affect Motueka’s retailers as most of them had been “gearing up for this for a number of years.” ' “It may be black for a small number, but there is not a cloud over all,” he said. Wills’s public affairs manager, Mr George Symmes, said 30 per cent of his company’s tobacco leaf came from the Motueka region. In 18 months it would be entirely from overseas, mainly the United States,

Brazil, Argentina, India, South Korea, Malawi, Thailand and Zimbabwe. Wills, which markets the Benson and Hedges, Peter Jackson and Sterling brands of cigarettes, was able to buy cheaper leaf from these countries, Mr Symmes said. He said a “tremendous amount of heartache and soul searching” went into the decision to pull out. To help growers over the loss of business, he said Wills had commissioned a report from the Ministry of Agriculture to look at diversification options. The company has also decided to sell its Motueka factory with the loss of one permanent fulltime job.

However, the Tobacco Growers Co-operative executive officer, Mr Mel Cox, said growers were told by Wills last year the company would be buying at world prices and their tobacco was not competitive.

He said most of the region’s 1986 growers had diversified into crops such as kiwifruit and nashi pears.

The tobacco crop had been in decline for a number of years, he said, and was now a third the size of the late 19605.