Factories in retreat: inside NZ’s deindustrialisation crisis
New Zealand is quietly dismantling the productive base that built its prosperity – and we’re doing it without anything resembling a plan.
Over the past decade, the country has shed around 20,000 manufacturing jobs while the sector’s share of GDP has steadily eroded. Factories producing everything from pulp and paper to frozen foods and wood products have scaled back or shut down entirely, including household names such as Wattie’s and McCain.
For regional centres like Westport and Kaitāia, each closure is an economic shock that ripples through the whole community. The…
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