Ballance Agri-Nutrients has confirmed its plans to end its manufacturing operations in Mount Maunganui, resulting in the loss of 60 jobs.

In a statement, Ballance’s chief executive Kelvin Wickham said the company is moving forward with its proposal, announced in April, to cease manufacturing single superphosphate from its Mount Maunganui site.

Ballance is a New Zealand farmer- and grower-owned co-operative.

Wickham said the company would continue utilising the Hewletts Rd site and its strategic location near the Port of Tauranga for nutrient storage and distribution, as well as the home base for its national support office.

“The co-operative would begin a process to wind down its manufacturing facilities, aiming to end manufacturing in the later part of this year,” Wickham said.

“We recently completed a six-week consultation process with impacted staff, which resulted in 66 roles being disestablished, and six new roles created, with a net loss of 60 jobs.”

He said the timeline to cease the manufacturing operations had been extended by three months after reviewing the impacted staff’s feedback.

Wickham said it was a “big call” to transition from a near-70-year history of manufacturing in Mount Maunganui, but the changes were necessary to set the co-operative up well for the future.

“We recognise the significance of this change for our co-operative and impacted people. We’ll be supporting them by offering any suitable redeployment opportunities at Ballance as well as career transition support.”

He said it would have required substantial investment to keep the Mount Maunganui manufacturing facilities “operating reliably”, alongside increasing regulatory constraints.

“With an over-capacity [of makers of single superphosphate] in New Zealand compared to the expected demand for this product, it is the right point in time for the co-operative to cease manufacturing at this location.”

Wickham said these changes enabled the co-operative to have “more agility” in sourcing nutrients, find new ways to provide value to its shareholders, and explore more blendable fertilisers and other densified phosphate products such as triple super phosphate and diammonium phosphate.

“We’re seeing much more efficient and effective use of nutrients delivering higher productivity off a much lighter footprint.

Kelvin Wickham.

“And a big focus for the co-operative is supporting our 16,000 shareholders with the technology, products and services that support those aims.”

Wickham said nutrients remained a vital part of driving New Zealand’s economic prosperity through food and fibre exports, with around 41% of the country’s agricultural exports enabled by fertiliser.

“To maintain supply, we secure nutrients from multiple sources and will continue to manufacture phosphate and urea at our Invercargill and Taranaki sites as well as imported products from offshore.”

“Our focus now is supporting our impacted people and working through the process of winding down and then decommissioning our Mount Maunganui manufacturing facilities.”