Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has emerged as a potential white knight for Kaitāia’s two at-risk timber mills, weighing a private bid to buy both sites as going concerns and save about 200 Far North jobs from a Japanese owner’s planned closure. It comes as Juken New Zealand’s two-month sale process for the Triboard and Northland mills nears its end this week, with the company warning it will shut both sites if no buyer is secured.
Brown, a two-term former Far North Mayor with extensive commercial interests in Kaitāia, told RNZ he was considering acquiring the mills in his capacity as a private businessman rather than through the Auckland Council. He, however, declined to name the parties he was working with, saying it was too early to divulge more.
“I’m chewing it over, would be the best I can say at the moment,” Brown said.
Brown has developed several large commercial properties in the North Park area next to the mills, where he is a landlord to private businesses and government agencies, and has built further developments in Mangōnui and Kerikeri elsewhere in the Far North. During his time as Far North Mayor, he revived a stalled project to build the Te Ahu Centre, a Kaitāia complex housing a library, community hall, cinema, museum and council service centre.
When it listed both Kaitāia mills for sale through an eight-week tender earlier this year, Juken New Zealand pointed to declining export markets and high operating costs, particularly electricity, as the reasons behind its exit. The mills are also major water users, consuming about a third of Kaitāia’s town supply, whilst the company plans to retain its newer Masterton mill, which makes similar products.
Northland MP Grant McCallum has separately told RNZ he had met a consortium of local and national investors keen to keep the mills running, although he could not say who was involved. The competing expressions of interest suggest more than one party is examining the sites before the tender period closes.
Workers First Union organiser Marcus Coverdale warned this week that the closure would have a “devastating effect” well beyond the 200 workers and their families, reaching a construction firm that uses Triboard panels to build prefabricated homes, trucking operators, and supermarkets across the town. The union has called a public meeting at the Te Ahu centre from 4.30 pm on Saturday.
Juken New Zealand has said it will close both Kaitāia mills, with the loss of about 200 jobs, if no buyer is secured before the tender period ends this week.
