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8 Irish deal boosts Fonterra probiotics Vol 21 No 43, November 6, 2023
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Signs of life for rural NZ’s ‘zombie towns’ Richard Rennie
PEOPLE
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Community
HE headline surge in national migration numbers has drawn rural winners and losers into its slipstream, based on the latest Infometrics report on Stats NZ population data. To June this year New Zealand experienced a record gain of 129,000 arrivals in 12 months, offset by 32,000 mainly younger Kiwis going overseas, leaving a net gain of 91,600, the equivalent to Palmerston North’s population.
We had Clutha and Waitaki have an increase of 1.3% in population each, driven mainly by an increase in employment in the manufacturing category, reflecting the meat companies filling positions. Nick Brunsdon Infometrics The rural districts that experienced the strongest gains in a single year include MacKenzie, Westland, Kaikoura, Western Bay of Plenty and Southland, all with growth rates between 1.2% and 3.6% for the year. Infometrics senior economist Nick Brunsdon said prior to 2023 most rural areas also enjoyed
solid internal migration as people moved back over the 2021-2022 period, partly in response to covid. He said acute labour shortages in meat processing plants had translated to continuing solid growth in the past year for some as meat companies scrambled to take advantage of lifting immigration lids to fill long vacant positions on processing chains. “That impact came through in the South Island in particular. We had Clutha and Waitaki have an increase of 1.3% in population each, driven mainly by an increase in employment in the manufacturing category, reflecting the meat companies filling positions.” In the North Island, Wairoa also enjoyed a 1.3% gain in population to June this year, despite the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle and repeated flooding events. Brunsdon said while meat processing had increased numbers in some areas, in others rural employment had tended to remain soft, and, if anything, on a longterm decline. Grey District, Gore, Kawerau, Buller and Timaru all continued to languish in the population growth stakes, experiencing zero or negative growth in population in one of the past two years. “The reality is for some areas they went from the early 1980s to 2013 losing people almost every year.” However, after 2014 there Continued page 3
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