Kimberly-Clark, who is a major manufacturer of toilet rolls and disposable nappies (Huggies I think) has a significant size factory near Millicent in SA. While it has 3 lines, they are currently only using one of them. Rather than sack two thirds of their workers they have chosen to go down the annual holiday/part-time route. Because our dollar is so high, Coles and Woolies can source their product much more cheaply overseas. And our dollar looks set to stay up there for a while yet. As the world economic conditions (especially the US) deteriorates our dollar will continue to shine. If Kimberly Clark has to close their mill, 170 workers will lose their jobs. Mt Gambier and Millicent, indeed the whole of SA, is stuffed already. Millicent will become a ghost town The SA government, in their wisdom has on-sold the harvesting rights of the SA Forest owned plantation for the next 100 years or so. They sold them to a huge American company who has also recently done the same deal with QLD forests. But I won't get into a rant about foreign investment in Australia on the Lifestyle forum.
Manufacturing is stuffed in Australia at the moment and they are doing it hard. I can't do a lot to help, but I can choose to buy sourced and made Australilan products such as toilet rolls, tinned pineapple or beetroot for example. When they are on special I just buy more of them. Not sure how much of Aldi's profit stays in Australia but I have noticed they are springing up everywhere on the Sunshine Coast. No wonder Woolies thinks the trading conditions in the next year or so will be tough.
Do we really want to lose more of our small towns? It's like losing part of our national identity and who we are. LRTF, you visit Adelong and Tumut regularly and thus must like the towns/ area. Ever considered how they would fare if the plantations around them were bought by this American mob who intend to chip all the wood and load them onto ships for China. No value adding in Australia, no factory production jobs. Tumut and Adelong would die. It's not just the packet of toilet rolls you see on the shelf, it's much more.
