00:00John Smith has seen a lot of changes on King Island over his three decades as a publican.
00:09He knows just how hard next year's closure of the King Island Dairy will hit the isolated
00:14community.
00:15With this another major factory closing down it's going to cause a lot of ripples in the
00:20community, a lot of ripples.
00:22The closure of the island's abattoirs a decade ago was a major blow before golf tourism offered
00:28a lifeline.
00:29In fact it wasn't until the golf courses started that morale started picking up so there's
00:33just been another kick in the rear really.
00:36The decision of the dairy's owner, Canada-based multinational Saputo, will leave about 60
00:42workers out of a job.
00:44That will have flow-on effects through the community.
00:46We'll lose school teachers, we'll lose truck drivers, we'll lose people out of businesses
00:51and so it won't be just the people who lose their jobs at the dairy.
00:57Saputo says it's spent 10 months looking for a buyer but the ABC understands it had
01:03no offers.
01:05The company described its King Island brand as nostalgic but said it hadn't stayed competitive.
01:11This hasn't convinced locals.
01:13I see that Saputo said that the brand was old and used by date and all that sort of
01:20thing which is a load of rubbish.
01:22Over the years the island's farms have increasingly converted from dairies to raising beef cattle.
01:27If the price comes off here with beef, like I said, there's no alternative, well what's
01:32the island going to do?
01:34It can't be just completely all golf.
01:37No matter the answer, locals just want certainty for the future.
01:41We just got off a high with the local grand final last week.
01:44There's a netball finals happening this week so there's still a little bit of vibrance
01:47around the island and that sort of thing but this certainly put a big damper on a lot of
01:51the moving forward.
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