Insight for Sunday 10 March 2013

A string of high-profile factory closures in recent times has fuelled a sense of growing crisis.

But how real is that sense of doom?

About 40,000 jobs have been lost from New Zealand's manufacturing sector in the past five years and export companies have told an Opposition inquiry they will be driven to the wall without major Government intervention.

Yet many economists and business groups say the trend is nothing new and that the crisis itself is being manufactured, harming the sector's image.

Radio New Zealand's Otago reporter, Ian Telfer, investigates the changing reality of manufacturing New Zealand and asks what its future may hold.

Image: Scott Engineering