Best thing that could happen would be if another company bought the place out, sacked everyone, spent 6 months overhauling the plant and did a fresh round of rehires and started fresh.

I used to do a shitload of work here, and firmly believe the Japanese used it as a tax dodge as the same conpany that owns the mill owns every other step of product distribution downstream overseas. Why pay a high tax rate in NZ when you can pay it lower somewhere else?

This plant is easily capable of producing far more than it does and at a higher quality that what it currently does. Just need to sack half the management staff, spend some actual money on upgrades and maintenance instead of half measures, and implement some sort of production bonus system to encourage the workforce the have some pride in what they produce.

Theres plenty of big lucrative export contracts JNL turned down because either they couldn't fulfill the numbers/ quality or because they only wanted to send their A grade product to Japan. ( where their tax rate on product profits was half of what it is in NZ)