Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Closure of the Inverell Supercoat Petcare facility - 168 jobs gone

Many New England regional centres have suffered from major job closures. Often these go unremarked by the metro media. I was reminded about this by a story from the Inverell Times reporting on the closure of the Supercoat Petcare facility.

The story is simple enough.

Nestle Purina Petcare has announced it is closing the Inverell Supercoat Petcare facility and moving it to Blayney, about 650km away in the state’s Central West.

Nestle Purina purchased the business in March 2007 and general manager David Grant said since then the company has conducted a review of its long-term manufacturing and sourcing needs for its Australian pet care business.

“Since purchasing the business we have run it largely as we found it and we have been very pleased with the factory’s performance,” Mr Grant said.

“It was a very difficult decision to make but when looking at the review, our Blayney factory can make all that we produce at the Inverell factory.

“To put all our product into Inverell, however, would require significant capital investment. The factory in Blayney is double the size of this place.”

Mr Grant said the review had been ongoing and the decision was made at the end of last week.
“We then advised staff and suppliers as soon as possible,” he said.

Closure of any facility is always a difficult issue, more so when it is located in a regional centre.

At least in this case another regional centre will benefit, while Nestlé Purina will provide redundancy payments and financial counselling, job-seek training and career counselling.

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