A positive culture

16 Whakatāne Mill Anniversary Positive Positive culture due t

STAFF at

Whakatāne

Mill have undergone a huge amount of change in the past 12 months – and in the main that change has been positive.

We spoke to three people who have worked on through the changes. The following are their thoughts on the mill and its culture. ROCHELLE HOGG, HR Coordinator, has been in the mill’s HR team for the past six years. The last 12 months, for her, have been hectic, but positively hectic once the mill’s future was stabilised. “There has been a huge amount of change in the past 12 months,” she says. “When the business was for sale, we were forced to assess what to do with our careers and lives. Some people needed to consider relocating from Whakatāne in search of career opportunities, which could have meant uprooting their families and their children changing schools. It was especially distressing for those people, as we all love living in our beautiful little town. It was such a huge relief when the Smurfi t Consortium bought the Mill, and everyone’s situations became more secure.” Miss Hogg says the company has hired over 70 new employees in the past 12 months. The mill has had plenty of challenges, including training new employees in their roles, but the culture is positive, and she puts that down to the people. “It’s the people who make the mill a great place to work. From production to maintenance to white-collar workers, we are grateful to have positive working relationships. Most of us like to have a bit of banter and a laugh, and new employees often comment on what a good place it is to work.” “One of the big focusses in our HR team is to further strengthen our culture and uplift our people, given that we have been through a stressful time during the sale and dealing with Covid on top of that. We have plans for employee events such as our fi rst birthday, as well as a new leadership programme and continuing our community engagement and sponsorship. We are so grateful to the Smurfi t Consortium, especially our Executive Chairman, Ian Halliday, who is taking our business to new strengths with our upcoming expansion project. He has got to know all of us personally and you often see him walking the plant and talking to employees, which means a lot to the team. We are excited to see what else the future holds in store for us, no doubt it’s going to be action packed!” MARK LATHAM, Production, People and Performance Manager, joined the mill in 2005 as paper machine manager. Over the years he has worked in different pulp and paper businesses and held many other roles. “I spent three years in Australia a few years back and the lure of Whakatāne brought me back,” he says. “I must say, the transition of coming back, and not long after fi nding the mill, was to close was a shock to the system. My options were to move away from the area, which I didn’t want to do. “The prospect of change for the staff was pretty daunting. We have some 40-year service employees. Some of their skills are transferrable but many of the skills are quite specialised to this mill because it is a unique mill. The process is unique; the product is unique. “The biggest thing at this mill – the reason I came back – is the culture and the attitude to change is really positive. This mill has been marginal over the last few years. We have always been the younger brother to other paper-making operations and we’ve always had to make changes to survive. The mill has gone through a number of times when it was likely to shut down, and economically it was not sustainable at times. It didn’t make the same income as other mills did, so we have been marginal. This sale has given us a new lease of life.”

“The biggest thing at this mill – the reason I came back – is the culture. And the attitude to change is really positive.”

Happy 1st Birthday Whakatane Mill! Happy 1st Birthday Whakatane Mill!

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Our people are our biggest asset, which means they are your greatest resource when it comes to a wide range of capabilities. We also do Health & Safety better than anyone. Our company has been built on a culture of complete transparency, so for you that is knowing where every dollar is spent. But it’s also bigger than that. It’s who we are internally, where everyone shares their ideas and expertise to leave ‘nostone-unturned’ when it comes to our approach to projects. nance, fabrication and procurement, your end game is our priority – and we’ll always do it with a focus on these four key elements:

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Congratulations to Whakatane Mill Ltd and Smurfit Consortium on their 1 Year Anniversary.Wishingyou many more years of successin the Eastern Bay!

e to staff

LANCE MAXWELL, Assistant Dry Man and senior site delegate for First Union, has been employed at the mill for 19 years and worked in various parts of the mill – mainly all based around the paper machine. He says that because a number of employees took redundancy at the time of the new ownership, there has been a lack of longterm experience, which has been a challenge, but things are getting better. “Had the mill closed, it would have been a real hit for the community. There would have been a massive effect on the then 220 staff members and their families – a total of 2500 people – plus all the contractors. “I fi nd the mill is a great place to work; the locality is brilliant; it’s good money and I am sure I wouldn’t fi nd that anywhere else around here. A lot of the guys who have left are starting to realise just how good they had it in terms of income.” He says there is a real sense of family – and over the years the mill has been employer to a vast number of family members.“My father worked here, some of my uncles and aunty worked here. Whole families worked here. We become a big family. In those days, it was a rite of passage that you were automatically able to get a job if you were a family member. That’s changed to some extent but the family feel is still here.” He considers the new owners’ plans to upgrade the mill and improve facilities a step in the right direction “We were promised a lot of upgrades with the last owners, but they never happened, so we were a bit sceptical when upgrades were announced by the new people, but now the containers and some machinery have already arrived we realise that something is defi nitely going to happen. That gives us a lot of confi dence. “I fi nd the prospect of change quite exciting and I’m really looking forward to the next year or so.” When the closure of the Whakatāne Mill was imminent, in early 2021 a number of staff had already decided to seek other employment. TAYLA WALKER-HUNT became the mill receptionist through a temping agency. Once the sale process was completed at the end of May of that year, she was taken on in the same role as a permanent mill employee. She has since risen through the ranks to the point where she is now the Maintenance Systems Administrator. Her work involves risk management, insurance details for contractors who enter the site, maintenance fi nance and helping maintenance supervisors. “We get really busy when the shuts are on, organising inductions for all the workers who come on site.

“I enjoy working at the mill,” she says. “I enjoy it. The people are really good here. “It was a diffi cult time. I knew that the place was closing down and people were feeling pretty unsure when I fi rst arrived, but once the mill was sold the full-time position came up and I liked it here, “We get paid well and we get superannuation, health insurance – it’s good for young families like myself.” Mill staffers

MARK LATHAM (far left), ROCHELLE HOGG (above), LANCE MAXWELL (right) and TAYLA WALKERHUNT (below) agree the positive culture at the Whakatāne Mill can be attributed to staff attitudes.

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