The two Hawke’s Bay mayors at the centre of the response to McCain Foods’ decision to shut its Hastings vegetable processing plant have asked the Canadian owned company to hold fire on dismantling the factory for another eight weeks while local growers test whether a community owned rescue is workable.
Workers facing redundancy from the Hastings plant if the rescue does not come together can read our guide to your rights when your employer makes you redundant in New Zealand.
Hastings District Mayor Wendy Schollum and Central Hawke’s Bay Mayor Will Foley wrote to McCain Foods on Thursday formally requesting a short pause on any major changes to the Omahu Road site at Twyford, the only large scale frozen vegetable plant left in the lower North Island. The factory is currently scheduled to wind down by the end of January 2027 and, according to growers who have been talking with the company, the freezing equipment, lines and tunnels are likely to be packed up and shipped offshore once production ends.
The mayors’ letter follows an industry meeting earlier in May convened by the two councils, which brought together more than 100 affected pea, bean, sweetcorn and carrot growers along with processors and sector representatives. The plant processes more than 50,000 tonnes of vegetables a year and has been at the heart of Heretaunga’s vegetable supply chain since McCain bought the business in 1996, when it acquired the family owned Grower Foods operation.
“We are asking for a short period to complete the work while the facility remains substantially intact,” Schollum said in a statement released alongside the letter. “This will help to determine whether there is a credible commercial pathway forward for the sector.”
Foley, whose Central Hawke’s Bay district contains many of the families who supply the plant, was careful to frame the request as a partnership rather than a confrontation. “We acknowledge the realities McCain is working through and this request is not intended to challenge the company’s right to make business decisions,” he said. “Government support would help ensure growers have access to the expertise and analysis needed to properly assess whether a sustainable long-term future remains possible.”
The two councils want the eight week window used for an independent feasibility study covering infrastructure, market opportunities, logistics, energy supply, water, workforce and the commercial economics of running the plant as a grower owned co-operative or processor.
Energy is the headline issue. After the May meeting Schollum reported that the room was unanimous that the cost and reliability of electricity and gas was the single biggest barrier to anyone putting fresh capital into vegetable processing in 2026. Bank lenders are wary of long payback periods on processing infrastructure when wholesale electricity prices remain elevated and contract gas is increasingly difficult to secure.
One of the growers most active in the rescue effort is Hugh Ritchie of Drumpeel Farms, who has supplied McCain for decades and recently harvested his last carrot crop destined for the Twyford lines. Ritchie has travelled to Japan to scout potential Asian markets for frozen vegetables grown on the Heretaunga Plains, on the basis that any grower led operation will need to find higher margin export buyers rather than rely on the squeezed New Zealand supermarket trade that helped tip McCain’s existing business into the red.
Ritchie has been blunt about the timing problem. As the company moves through its shutdown plan, individual pieces of plant could be unbolted and crated for shipment well before January, which would make any later attempt to restart processing on the site dramatically more expensive. That is the practical reason the mayors are pressing for a pause rather than waiting until the end of the year.
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has signalled he is open to realistic options if a feasibility study comes back with a workable commercial case, and has asked the Ministry for Primary Industries to move quickly on its own assessment.
The McCain closure has also landed alongside a separate decision by Heinz Wattie’s to scale back parts of its Hawke’s Bay operation, leaving two of the region’s biggest food processors in retreat at the same time. The Heretaunga Plains supply more than half of New Zealand’s harvest of several fruit and vegetable crops, so the consequences of losing large scale processing extend well beyond the Hastings city boundary into Central Hawke’s Bay, Wairoa and even down into the Manawatu market gardens that send produce north for freezing.
For its part McCain has confirmed it has fielded approaches from several parties interested in the plant and its equipment, including the grower group. The company has not yet publicly committed to extending its January 2027 timeline but has said commercial discussions are continuing, which is the only reason the rescue conversation is still alive at all.
The mayors are pitching the request as the smallest possible ask. Eight weeks is roughly the length of a single growing rotation and would not, on its face, prevent McCain from going ahead with its preferred exit if the feasibility study comes back negative. It would, however, give a region whose vegetable industry was effectively built around the Twyford factory a fair shot at writing the next chapter itself rather than watching the machinery leave on a ship.
What do you think? Should McCain hand the local growers the time they need to put a credible offer together, or is the writing already on the wall for large scale vegetable processing on the Heretaunga Plains? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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