Dollar final nail in coffin

ANOTHER chunk of Australian manufacturing passed into history yesterday -- along with 145 jobs and a product that helped build the nation.

ANOTHER chunk of Australian manufacturing passed into history yesterday -- along with 145 jobs and a product that helped build the nation -- as the staff of Australian Hardboards went out with heads held high.

Right to the end, they kept the steam presses running to punch out the last orders of masonite, the chipboard that has lined walls, doors and floors of Australian homes for the past half a century.

As the tears and the beer flowed at a farewell barbecue at the Australian Hardboards factory at Ipswich, west of Brisbane, there was more sorrow than anger at the loss of an industry that employed two generations of the Moore family and produced enough masonite to cover 500sq km.

Gavin Moore, 43, started there in 1985 as a 17-year-old after his father, Leon, set him up with the job. He ended up as production manager, married, with three children and a mortgage. "I thought I would retire here," he said, as the plant was formally shut down yesterday and the workforce gathered for one last hurrah.

"I worked my way up from the floor, the way a lot of the blokes did. It was a bit like a second home to us all."

Executive chairman and part-owner Louis Niederer said there had been no alternative to closing.

Despite efficiency gains that lifted production by up to 60 per cent, the high dollar compounded the problems of competing with imported masonite made for a third of the cost in Thailand.

The last straw came when a key supplier in South Africa abruptly cancelled its long standing contract, blasting a gaping hole in the company's bottom line. "It's like a lot of traditional manufacturing -- eventually you just can't compete," Mr Niederer said.

The demise of Australian Hardboards, after 52 years, is also the story of traditional manufacturing's fight to stay in business in Australia.

Once the backbone of the nation and working-class communities such as Ipswich, manufacturing continues to reel from the double-tap of low-cost imports and a dollar that effectively ramps up the price of Australian exports. Latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that manufacturing employs less than a 10th of workers, down from 11.4 per cent a decade ago.

The trend is accelerating. In the year to August, manufacturing contracted by 2.8 per cent, shedding 28,900 jobs.

In its heyday, in the 1950s, when masonite was a fixture of home-building, with none of the lethal complications that would emerge with asbestos-based fibro, the operation that morphed into Australian Hardboards employed more than 500 people in factories dotted across four states.

The Ipswich plant was the last one standing, turning waste hardwood from NSW plantation forests into the famous chocolate-coloured board that is still used widely as flooring underlay.

Check the bottom of any drawer and there's every chance it will be made of masonite; generations of Australian students have studied in front of blackboards backed by the material.

Mr Moore said many long-serving staff had spent their working lives at Australian Hardboards. "We have got blokes who have run the one machine for 30 years," he said.

Shift manager Chris Pascoe, 39, said he had never had to interview for a job before. "When I first started, 19 years ago, they said 'Do you want a job or what?', and I said 'Yeah' and that was it. I've been here ever since."

Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale said the closure of Australian Hardboards would be felt keenly by the community. The company was one of the town's largest and longest-standing employers. Ties ran deep to the now-silent factory.

"We've worked very hard to get a lot of manufacturing jobs back, so this breaks my heart," Mr Pisasale said yesterday.

The blow, falling so close to Christmas, was cushioned by the redundancy deal. Workers received three weeks' pay for each year of service, plus leave and other entitlements. The package is worth about $7.5 million.

And since news of the shutdown broke five weeks ago, Mr Niederer and his managers have been fielding calls from other companies keen to cherrypick the employees.

Operations manager George Curry said he expected about 70 per cent of them would find new jobs -- though not necessarily locally.

The sheet-rolling equipment and huge steam-powered presses that had turned out up to 13 million square metres of masonite annually, and turned over about $36m for the business, will be broken up and sold overseas.

Australian Hardboards' former competitors in Thailand are said to be particularly interested.

For years, they have tried to work out what gave the Australian product its edge. While masonite generally has to be cut with a power saw to measure, the locally made version could be scored with a knife and snapped to size by hand, saving time and money.

Insiders say the secret lay with the special properties of Australian hardwood and the skill of those who turned it into masonite.

Another reason for the Australian Hardboards workers to take grim satisfaction from a job well done.