Victoria, Australia, October 9, 2006--Carpet maker Godfrey Hirst is to lay off 134 staff at the Feltex plant in Christchurch, according to Radio New Zealand.
The company bought Feltex from its receivers last month, and immediately made 44 workers redundant at a wool-scouring plant near Marton.
Originally, it said 76 people would be made redundant in Christchurch, but now that number has jumped to 134.
Godfrey Hirst's New Zealand general manager, Tania Pauling, says the plant has been performing poorly for some time. She says Feltex had been bidding for contracts at or below the cost of production in order to compete with low-cost producers in Asia, which is unsustainable.
Some staff will be offered jobs at Godfrey Hirst's yarn mill subsidiary, Canterbury spinners.
A union delegate at the Christchurch plant told Checkpoint the factory is being closed down. Union delegate Tony Sparks says most staff will be laid off in November and the plant will stop operating in December.
He says workers were shellshocked and angry when they were given the news on Monday afternoon. He says the company gave them false hopes about the future of the plant.
Mr Sparks says the situation is heartbreaking, especially for some of the older workers who have worked at the plant for a long time and will struggle to find other jobs.
