Wednesday, June 12, 2013

HarperCollins confirms new NZ structure


HarperCollins Australia and New Zealand CEO, James Kellow, today confirmed the decision to close the company’s distribution operations in New Zealand, and to switch supply of the NZ market to the HarperCollins warehouse in Australia at the end of July.  In addition, Kellow confirmed that support services would also be maintained from the Sydney offices in the future.

“We remain committed to publishing New Zealand books for New Zealand readers, and look forward to maintaining a local publishing programme in the future” said Kellow.  “We will now start the search for new premises for HarperCollins NZ on Auckland’s North Shore for our ongoing publishing, sales and marketing communications team. I’m pleased to announce that Matthew Simpson and Sandra Noakes will continue to lead our sales and marketing activities in New Zealand.

General Manager, Graham Mitchell, has kindly agreed to stay on until the transition of the business has been successfully completed, and I am very grateful for his continued support.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our wonderful staff for their loyalty and commitment to HarperCollins NZ over many years of successful publishing, and also for their generous patience and understanding during this difficult time.

As we get closer to August, we will provide ongoing updates to our NZ customers about the transition to Moss Vale.”


1 comment:

Gavin McLean said...

OK, it's back to 1840-1 when we were a dag hanging off the colony of NSW. So be it. But when the Aussies look for new premises, shorn of bulky warehouses, why not put their token 2-6 Kiwi implants on the other side of the bridge, where most of their authors and booksellers live. After all, it was the then-plentiful and cheap Nth Shore land that drove Hodders and their copycats to base editorial and marketing teams on top of vast FLT-friendly warehouses. Just a thought...