The organiser of a jobs expo for hundreds of Cadbury workers says she is confident of finding work for most or all of them.
The Cadbury factory will close over the next five months. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
The event at the Dunedin Town Hall today has been created to match dozens of employers seeking staff, with 350 Cadbury workers being made redundant as the chocolate factory closes over the next five months.
It was opened up to the public afterwards.
The expo was organised because of the large number of redundancies coming up in Dunedin, the Ministry of Social Development's southern labour market manager Emma Hamilton said.
Cadbury workers were loyal, skilled and hard working and highly sought after, Ms Hamilton said.
"There are lots of employers out there looking for good staff, so we are feeling quite confident we will be able to get some good results out of this," she said.
Employers were coming to the expo from Dunedin, around the Otago region and the country, and one from Australia.
There would be a wide variety of jobs on offer, in areas such as manufacturing, corrections, food manufacturing, transport, dairy and many others.
The ministry had organised a similar expo once before, in 2009, when the Fisher and Paykel appliance factory in Mosgiel closed, and it had been highly successful, Ms Hamilton said.