For almost 125 years, workers at the sugar refinery on the shores of the Waitemata harbour have been manufacturing the sweet stuff that is in much of the food and drink that we consume.
The Chelsea sugar refinery was established as the New Zealand Sugar Company in 1882 after winning a bounty from the New Zealand government to establish the first sugar refinery in the country. Many other industries were started in this way during the industrialisation phase of New Zealand.
The sugar refinery was built in 1883 and started production in 1884. Three years later the sugar market collapsed which saw a change in shareholding with shares in the original company being swapped for shares in the Australian company, CSR. A more recent challenge to the company and its workers occurred in the deregulation and de-industrialisation phase of New Zealand in the late 1980s. Chelsea got through that and is now one of the only sugar refineries operating anywhere in the world without some form of tariff, duty, quota or licence system to prohibit the importation of processed sugar.
The New Zealand Sugar Company has its main operational and distribution base at the Chelsea Refinery. It produces, markets, sells and distributes approximately 200,000 tonnes of sugar per annum. It has a sales office and liquid sugar plant in Christchurch and an office in Palmerston North. Warehouse facilities in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin are supplied with sugar direct from the Auckland refinery. Chelsea purchases raw sugar on the world sugar market. It receives bulk crystalline raw sugar from several producers with Queensland, Australia which is its preferred regional supplier. We recognise NZ refined Chelsea sugar in the red and white bags that we buy at the supermarket. This is the most profitable product that the company sells but is only a small part of the thousands of tonnes of sugar that Chelsea produces every year for the food and beverage market. It also produces other consumer products such as golden syrup, treacle, icing caster, brown and raw sugar and coffee crystals. Chelsea has over 120 product and pack options, with sizes ranging from 3 gram sachets for retail sale to 24-tonne bulk road tankers of crystal or liquid sugars for large food and beverage manufacturers.
Jensen Thomas is the senior NDU delegate at Chelsea. He has worked there for 18 years. “It has been good for us to have had such a strong and well organised union at Chelsea over the years,” says Jensen. “We have 100% union density in the areas covered by the union. This means that we have comparatively good wages and conditions and the company treats its workers and the union with respect.
“Over 20 years ago we decided to merge our small sugar refinery workers union with the NDU. We have continued to grow in strength since then. The NDU is able to provide us with organising support, legal advice, good communications and a newspaper which we would never been able to produce on our own. It is also good to be a part of a wider union and we are pleased that our fees go to help organising new jobs where our partners, children or other family members will end up working.
“Around 4 years ago we had a week long strike as part of the 5% campaign. We had a good outcome from the strike and relations with the company have even improved since.
“Our major problem currently is around the ACC Partnership scheme, which is not working for our members. We will need to work with the union on this to try and turn the scheme around so that it benefits the workers, the people that it should be helping,” Jensen says.
A quarter of the 5.6 million shares of the New Zealand Sugar Company are owned by a group of Queensland sugar producers called Mackay Sugar Ltd and the other three quarters are owned by companies owned by one of Australia’s oldest companies, CSR.Originally founded in 1855 as a sugar company, CSR is one of Australia’s leading manufacturing companies with operations throughout Australia as well as in Asia and New Zealand. Through its three principal businesses, CSR is a leading supplier of building products and sugar and holds a 25% interest in the Tomago aluminium smelter. CSR is also developing a number of its sites for future land sales including developing some of the land around the Chelsea refinery.
As Australia’s largest sugar producer, CSR has seven mills located in some of Australia’s most productive sugarcane regions as well as its three quarter stake in the Chelsea refinery.
Within its building products division CSR is most well known in New Zealand for its Monier™ roof tiles and Bradford™ insulation products. Aucklanders driving down the Great South Road in Penrose can’t miss the Monier Made in New Zealand bill board on the corner of Church Street.
At the moment CSR is considering splitting the sugar, ethanol and energy part of the business from the building product division. But in the meantime, whether it is sugar or roof tiles, even an Aussie company recognises the value to make it here!
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NDU MEMBERS ARE MAKING THE WORLD’S best carpets. Over the last few years, the main news from the carpet industry has been the trouble around the collapse of Feltex and the closure of four of the former Feltex yarn and carpet mills.
However a world class carpet industry still remains in New Zealand, using New Zealand wool and employing hundreds of kiwi workers, most of whom are NDU members.
The remaining carpet firms in New Zealand are Godfrey Hirst and Cavalier Bremworth.
Godfrey Hirst took over the remains of Feltex after its collapse and has a large carpet manufacturing facility in Wiri with yarn plants at Dannevirke and Lower Hutt.
Cavalier Bremworth has two yarn mills in Wanganui and Napier and a carpet mill in Papatoetoe. It also is the major shareholder in Norman Ellison that makes yarn and carpets in Onehunga.
Cavalier Papatoetoe head delegate Salu- Jean Mu’a says,” Our carpets are made from NZ wool and provide lots of jobs for kiwis from shearing, scouring, yarn and carpet making. When you, your employer or a Government department buys a kiwi made carpet you are keeping hundreds of us keep our jobs.”