Gregg’s is a brand that generations of New Zealanders have grown up using, and an employer which has paid the wages of generations of Dunedin’ites.
The coffee and spice manufacturing firm was established in the city in 1862 and grew to become a part of the fabric of Dunedin life.
Famously Gregg’s are makers of instant coffee and on some production days, when the wind is in the right quarter, the aroma of coffee sweeps across the city, providing a sensory reminder of the firm’s importance to Dunedin.
Instant coffee was invented in the South — Strang’s soluble coffee was patented in Invercargill in 1890 — and Gregg’s still making the product in this part of the world was a serendipitous link to the past.
Coffee beans do not grow near Dunedin, and nor do most of the many spices Gregg’s also makes, for that matter.
Transport of raw goods does not come cheap — as we have been reminded in recent days, as fuel prices rocket upwards.
Nor does manufacturing: power prices are also on an upward trajectory, as are many of the other costs of doing business.
Heinz Wattie’s described its factory closure proposal as a necessary step to position the company for the future. The manufacturing environment in New Zealand has become ‘‘increasingly difficult’’.
Fine words, but what the company really means is that it is deemed to be too expensive.
The responsibility of Heinz Wattie’s executives is to maximise return on its shareholder’s investment and, frankly, it is cheaper to make its products in a country with lower wages and lesser associated costs. Sentiment be damned, it is business sense which rules.
Heinz Wattie’s are only proposing to close the Gregg’s factory at this point, and are working with employees, union representatives, growers, suppliers, retail partners and other local stakeholders through a consultation period.
However, Dunedin has been here before with large multi-national companies and historic local factories.
Fisher and Paykel and Cadbury’s are just two of many examples in recent years where many locals have lost their jobs and a part of the region’s history has gone with it as manufacturing has ceased in the city.
Yes hope still endures as no final decision has been made, but precedent suggests that it would be a slim hope.
Dunedin is not the only community affected by these proposals. Plants in Auckland, Hastings and Christchurch also face closure, and production of Wattie’s frozen vegetables — a freezer staple of many a New Zealand family — would cease.
This would affect farmers and other suppliers across the country and also raises questions about food supply and food security.
Is New Zealand, a famously verdant and fertile country, on the way toward becoming a country that will be forced by market forces to import what were once staple, home-grown foods?
Right now New Zealand grows enough fresh food to feed our people, but much of that produce is exported so is never seen by local consumers.
And the one-third of households which a Consumer NZ survey suggests rely on food banks or financial help to feed themselves will certainly never see much of that produce.
That foodchain is a precarious thing: as has become an all to regular thing in recent years, we are only ever a serious weather event away from local supplies of a staple fruit of vegetable from being washed away.
When that happens frozen foods are a fallback position, but they may well not be locally grown Wattie’s frozen vegetables in the future.
The fate of Gregg’s is not sealed as yet: Heinz Wattie’s review may find a way to make the factory more efficient, or some other company may feel that they could take on the venerable firm and make a going concern of it.
But as things stand, Gregg’s may well be another canary in the coal mine, signalling how life and business is changing in the South.
