Hutt's revival years in the making

The Hutt once played a key role in this country's manufacturing and primary export industries, with huge car assembly plants and woolstores occupying vast tracts of land and employing tens of thousands.

But the economic restructuring of the 1980s and '90s saw the shutters go up on many of the old plants, creating a huge surplus of vacant industrial land.

The big properties owned by the multinationals were not the only ones affected.

As major car assemblers and other large manufacturers closed down, many of the smaller companies supplying them with components and services were also forced out of business, creating a ripple effect of vacant space in the valley's industrial and commercial property markets.

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