Sorbent Paper will shut a second paper machine at its Box Hill plant in Melbourne’s outer east, wiping out around 60 more skilled manufacturing jobs at one of Australia’s most recognised household brands and prompting the Timber, Furnishing and Textiles Union (TFTU) to dub the move an act of ‘corporate vandalism’.
The closure deepens a multi-year retreat from Australian tissue manufacturing under Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) ownership, according to information obtained by Wood Central from the union, with each round of contraction since the 2018 acquisition reducing local jobs, skills and production capacity at the site.
TFTU Pulp & Paper Workers District Secretary Denise Campbell-Burns said the company was abandoning the workers and community that made Sorbent a household name, with skilled, secure manufacturing work being replaced by imported products as the offshore-owned operator shut down Australian machines:
“These jobs are not just at risk — they are being wiped out,” Campbell-Burns said.
The latest decision was part of a pattern rather than an isolated cut, Campbell-Burns said, with each round of contraction reducing jobs, skills, production capacity and Australia’s ability to make essential household products locally. “It happens machine by machine, shift by shift, job by job,” she said, adding that once the machines were gone, they were gone for good — along with the jobs, the skills and the capacity to make those products in Australia.
The union said Sorbent’s owners were using the value of a trusted Australian brand — built across more than seven decades of domestic manufacturing and household advertising — to grow consumer acceptability of imported products while cutting the local jobs, skills and manufacturing capacity that built that brand. Wood Central understands the strategy is also displacing Australia’s remaining tissue and toilet paper manufacturers, with the union arguing companies still making products domestically were being forced to compete against an operator trading on an Australian name while moving the work offshore.
Campbell-Burns said Australia should not wait for another supply crisis before acting to defend local production, noting that the 2020 COVID pandemic had exposed the consequences of relying on overseas supply for essential household goods. Toilet paper became the most visible symbol of supply chain fragility through the pandemic, the union said, with the lesson now being ignored as the offshoring continued.
The union is calling on Sorbent’s owners to reverse the cuts, protect the 60 affected workers and commit to the future of Australian tissue and toilet paper manufacturing at Box Hill. “They built this business. Now they are watching it being dismantled,” Campbell-Burns said, with the latest decision coming on top of years of contraction since APP acquired the site in 2018.
Please note: Wood Central has reached out to Sorbent Paper for comment.
