Around 25 Bay of Plenty workers will lose their jobs when one of the oldest sawmills in New Zealand closes at the end of the month.

Mamaku Sawmill is the last operating mill in the area, which was once a hub of the country's timber industry.

Mamalu Sawmill will close at the end of the month.

'The high exchange rate has taken a toll,” says Red Middlemiss, EPMU organiser for the Mamaku Sawmill.

'But the biggest problem for sawmills is that successive governments have sold off our forests to overseas buyers, who would rather ship the raw logs out of the country than have them processed here.

'The local forests, which traditionally supplied Mamaku, are now owned by organisations like Harvard University – and they're obviously going to be more interested in short-term profits for their pension fund than sustaining good Kiwi jobs.”

EPMU members at the sawmill are entitled to redundancy compensation under their collective agreement, says Red.