Griffin & Sons Ltd was established in Nelson by John Griffin in the 1860s. The Lower Hutt factory was opened in 1938. It had the first continuous automatic biscuit-baking oven in the southern hemisphere, which was used until the factory closed. The factory site had rose gardens, a goldfish pond and tennis courts and became known as "The Garden Factory".
Sadly, after 70 years in production, it closed the doors for the last time on Wednesday Dec 17, 2008, putting 228 people out of work. They said they could not justify the investment needed to upgrade ageing equipment at the site. Griffin's said it would continue production at its newly revamped factory in Papakura, South Auckland.
JULY 2009: Wondering where the Gingernuts have gone? Well according to local and national press releases, they have been in short supply since the move to the Auckland factory and local supermarkets have been quite annoyed, saying they have been without since the move. Griffins said they had "minor teething issues", which had resulted in some short term supply challenges and they "are working hard to ensure that any supply issues are resolved as swiftly as possible."
There have also been reports lately that with the move of the Gingernut manufacture to Auckland, the biscuit isn’t the same. Some reports say that the recipe is different and so they now taste different and don’t even have the same “dunking” structure that they used to. Some even complained to “Fair Go”. A Griffins spokesperson insisted the Gingernut recipe had not been changed.
Mr Warwick Johnston, a local historian who was commissioned to write a history of the more than 70 years of biscuit production at the Hutt factory, understands for a number of months before the Hutt plant finally closed its doors, experiments were going on with timing, temperature and tweaking the recipe to try and exactly reproduce the icon biscuits in Auckland. He believes that one of the reasons they are different could be that the Hutt factory used electric ovens and the Auckland factory uses gas-fired ones.
So want to know what is here now? The answer is Flight Group Ltd, a Wellington based privately owned plastics and timber manufacturer. Their plastic division was based in Lyall Bay with a staff of 70 who moved to the site in 2010. The front part of the 70-year old biscuit factory has been kept, but out the back the former ovens area has been demolished and replaced with a large new building.
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