Finance Minister Bill English says the Government will not be stepping in with a rescue package for a Rotorua sawmill in receivership.
Tachikawa Forest Products was placed in receivership on Friday and union representatives say the jobs of 130 mill workers are at risk.
Receivers KordaMentha have said the plant is shut down until further notice. They plan to put the business on the market and are assessing whether they can re-start operations.
The FIRST Union said the company has blamed the high New Zealand dollar and high log prices for the firm's failure.
Mr English told TVNZ's Q+A programme that government intervention of the kind offered to the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter would be offered only in exceptional circumstances.
"It's a pragmatic way of making decisions. We could say 'hands off, we don't help anybody'. We've made the odd exception here and there in quite extraordinary circumstances.
"In this case, the best thing for that sawmill is not a government subsidy, it's the opportunity for those people to get a job in another industry that's growing."
The Finance Minister said he accepts that the situation in Rotorua is hard on the workers.
