Silver Fern Farms is planning to upgrade its coldstore facilities at its Pareora site and close its leased Canterbury coldstore in Belfast.
The Dunedin meat processor announced last month it was moving its Islington (Christchurch) venison operations to Pareora and spending $5 million on a new venison processing plant at the South Canterbury operation as part of the change.
Twenty-eight staff would be affected by the coldstore closure. They were being consulted about transfer options within the group.
SFF chief operating officer Kevin Winders said staff at Islington accepted the venison relocation proposal last month.
"We are making headway on the planning for the $5 million redevelopment of the Pareora site to accommodate a new venison plant. We are aiming to have the site processing by the end of this year.''
At the outset, SFF wanted to retain as many of the Islington team as possible as they were skilled and dedicated people who were needed at other sites, he said.
While some had seen it as a good time to do something different, or to take early retirement, a "good number'' of them had taken up opportunities at other sites in the SFF network, which had been a great result, Mr Winders said.
SFF chief executive Dean Hamilton said the achievement of the company in inventory management meant it did not require as much cold storage as it had in the past.
It made little sense to redevelop what were old facilities on the leased site when the company was redeveloping existing cold storage at its owned Pareora site.
"With the $5 million redevelopment of our Pareora plant to accommodate new venison processing, we will be upgrading our cold storage and blast freezer space.''
During the planning of the redevelopment, it had become clear SFF no longer required the storage space in Belfast (Canterbury), he said.
Regarding the placement of staff, Mr Hamilton said the people there were needed in the company and he wanted to retain their skills and experience.
There were options for the staff at the Belfast beef plant, at the Fairton (Ashburton) lamb plant and at Pareora. Those options would be discussed with staff in the consultation process.
