20/11/09_Shame on McCain, say TFGA
Published: 20/11/2009
Shame on McCain, says TFGA
Tasmania’s peak farming body, the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association (TFGA), says it is appalled both at the decision by McCain Foods to close its Smithton vegetable processing plant and the lack of notice it gave to anyone of its intention to do so.
TFGA chief executive Chris Oldfield said that for the company also to declare it would in future source its vegetables from New Zealand was a triple whammy for Tasmanian growers, “a real slap in the face”, he said.
“I am speechless that a company with such strong ties to Tasmania can treat its workers and its contractors so shabbily,” Mr Oldfield said.
“My heart goes out to the 115 workers at Smithton who will lose their jobs and to the 100 growers who supplied McCain’s with approximately $20 million of beans, peas, carrots, cauliflowers and broccoli in 2008/09. Hundreds of families will be affected.
“These people have been loyal to McCain and to reward that loyalty in this way is just incomprehensible,” he said.
The TFGA is making an emergency assessment of the impact of the closure, it will hold urgent talks with its grower representatives but said it welcomed the Tasmanian Government’s immediate move to set up a task force to assess this decision by McCain.
“The TFGA will do its part to try to convince McCain to reconsider its move” Mr Oldfield said.
“What happened to the protocol that anybody doing business in Tasmania, if you sensed there was trouble and jobs might go, you advised the Tasmanian Government at the first hint of that trouble?”
He said McCain was ripping the heart out of the north-west coast. Not only was it ending processing; it would no longer take Tasmanian vegetables.
“That is just an insult,” he said. “Tasmanian vegetable growers have been warning for years that they are threatened by imports and here is clear evidence that one of our biggest threats is across the Tasman.
Mr Oldfield said Tasmanian farmers were acutely aware that their future lay in local downstream processing of their produce; it was not good enough to grow and ship away.
“What McCain has done is precisely how you do not do business in Tasmania.
“This is wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Contact:
Chris Oldfield 0419 309 303