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11.5% of Waikato employees work in manufacturing

Microsoft Copilot in Waikato manufacturing offices

Waikato plants run from Gallagher's Hamilton factory to Fonterra sites and the Kinleith pulp mill. The office layer is shared: production files, quality notes, supplier mail and a stack of meetings.

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Illustration generated with AI.
Employees in manufacturing
25,192Waikato, February 2025
Share of Waikato employees
11.5%6 of 16 regions
Share across New Zealand
9.4%all regions, February 2025
Location quotient
1.22×more concentrated than nationally

Manufacturing in Waikato

Gallagher says more than 850 people work at its Waikato headquarters, across office and manufacturing2. Fonterra lists sites at Te Rapa, Hautapu, Te Awamutu, Morrinsville, Waitoa, Waharoa, Tirau and Lichfield1. Tatua manufactures at Tatuanui. AFFCO's Horotiu beef plant holds registrations for more than 80 export markets5. Those addresses are why a procedure cannot live in one person's inbox.

Microsoft 365 Copilot sits inside Outlook, Teams, Word and Excel, which is where planners, quality coordinators and buyers already work. A pilot in those roles shows what helps, and the checks required, before licences spread across the site.

Paid employees in manufacturing went from 24,723 in February 2020 to 25,192 in February 2025 (+1.9%).

Share of paid employees in manufacturing, by region

Share of employees in manufacturing by region, Waikato highlighted
RegionChartShareNZ×
Taranaki 16.0% 9.4% 1.7×
Southland 16.0% 9.4% 1.7×
Marlborough 15.6% 9.4% 1.6×
Hawke's Bay 12.7% 9.4% 1.4×
West Coast 12.4% 9.4% 1.3×
Waikato (this page) 11.5% 9.4% 1.2×
Canterbury 10.8% 9.4% 1.1×
Tasman 10.8% 9.4% 1.1×
Manawatū-Whanganui 10.7% 9.4% 1.1×
Nelson 9.3% 9.4% 1.0×
Bay of Plenty 9.1% 9.4% 1.0×
Auckland 9.0% 9.4% 0.9×
Northland 8.5% 9.4% 0.9×
Otago 7.5% 9.4% 0.8×
Gisborne 7.3% 9.4% 0.8×
Wellington 4.4% 9.4% 0.5×

Paid employees at business locations in the region, February 2025. The tick marks the national share. × is the regional share divided by the national share.

Source: Stats NZ, Business Demography Statistics, February 2020 and 2025.

Local context

  • Oji Fibre Solutions said in February 2025 that Kinleith would stop paper at the end of June and keep making pulp, with about 230 jobs expected to go. RNZ later reported about 150 people leaving on 30 June.3,4
  • AFFCO says Horotiu uses robotics, online pH checks and x-ray measurement of chemical lean, beside a rendering and blood plant.5
  • Pastoral farming and exotic forestry remain the main productive land uses, which is the supply behind the dairy, meat and pulp sites.6
  • Regional GDP fell 0.5 per cent in the year to March 2025. The chamber monitor ties that fall to construction, mining and utilities, with agriculture offsetting part of it.7

Organisations are named for local context only. No relationship with them is implied.

Towns in Waikato

Each town page has its own figures and local brief.

Or see Microsoft Copilot training across Waikato.

Where Copilot helps manufacturing teams

  • Weekly output in Excel

    Drop the production or downtime export into an Excel table. Copilot in Excel can name the shifts or lines that moved. Each figure is checked on the sheet before it is read out at the management meeting.

    • Production planners
    • Copilot in Excel

  • Procedure updates in Word

    Point Copilot in Word at the approved procedure and the change request. It drafts the revision. Quality staff edit it. The controlled copy does not change until the existing approval is finished.

    • Quality coordinators
    • Copilot in Word

  • Supplier threads in Outlook

    A late delivery or a specification argument often sits in a long Outlook thread. Copilot can list what was promised and what is still open, then draft a reply that the buyer edits against the purchase terms.

    • Purchasing staff
    • Copilot in Outlook

  • Planning calls in Teams

    Site, customer and project calls held in Teams can be recapped into decisions and actions. Someone who was on the floor can ask what changed without replaying the whole meeting.

    • Planners and project leads
    • Teams meeting recap

  • An instructions agent

    Build a Copilot Studio agent over the approved work instructions so a new coordinator can ask where a form sits. The agent should cite the file. A process owner tests it before the wider crew uses it.

    • Site trainers
    • Copilot Studio

A checked weekly production note

  1. Save the production export as an Excel table in the plant's SharePoint library.
  2. Use Copilot in Excel to list changes on the previous week, and confirm each one on the rows.
  3. Draft the note in Word from that checked table, then cut anything the sheet does not support.
  4. Share the note in the Teams channel and link the workbook.

Courses

  1. 1Introductory

    Microsoft Copilot foundations

    A first hands-on session on Copilot Chat and Copilot in Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

  2. 2Advanced

    Copilot Studio agents and advanced Excel

    Build and test a Copilot Studio agent for one internal process, and go further with Copilot in Excel.

Manufacturing in other regions

Other industries in Waikato

See Microsoft Copilot for manufacturing and food processing across New Zealand, or all training in Waikato.

Manufacturing in Waikato: questions

Should everyone on the line have a licence?

Usually no. Begin with planners, quality, purchasing and supervisors who already spend the day in Outlook, Teams, Word and Excel. Widen the group only after that pilot has a clear result.

Will Copilot connect to the plant system?

Not on day one. Copilot in Excel reads the workbook. A connector or a Copilot Studio action into another system is an IT project, scoped after the basic skills are in place.

Can you train at the site?

Yes. Sessions run at the workplace in the Waikato, or live in Teams. Format and length are set with the site lead first.

What files help the session?

A production export with customer names removed, a procedure due for review, and one supplier thread. People learn faster on those than on a sample workbook.

Are you endorsed by Microsoft?

No. This is independent training from TheColab. There is no Microsoft endorsement and no Microsoft partnership behind the course.

Train your manufacturing team in Waikato

  1. ScopeHeadcount, sites, Microsoft 365 plan and licences, and the teams you want to start with.
  2. PlanWe propose a course, a pilot group and a format, and agree the files and meetings to use.
  3. TrainOn-site or over Teams, in Outlook, Word, Excel and Teams, with your own work.
  • In person
  • Remote
  • Half-day workshop
  • Full-day workshop
  • Team rollout

Independent training by TheColab. Not affiliated with Microsoft.

Enquire

Tell us about your team in Waikato. We reply by email with a suggested course and format.

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Sources

Written 4 October 2026. Employment figures come from Stats NZ Business Demography Statistics.