Few employers can prepare a cake with 100 birthday candles.

Even fewer employers can boast about a staff member with 60 years of experience who is still on the payroll.

Skellerup this year celebrates its centenary and the longest serving staff member, 75-year-old Lawrence Jones, has no imminent plan to retire.

He has lived and worked in Woolston, Christchurch, his whole life.

Lawrence is better known as Monk to the Skellerup staff, short for monkey, the nickname his father gave him as a baby.

Monk started at Skellerup when it was known as Marathon Footwear. His mother brought him along as a 15-year old to join his older brother, Leonard, in the gumboot preparation room cutting ankle patches. "It was the 16th of January, 1950 and my weekly salary was two pounds and five shillings."

He's the only present staff member who actually met the company's founder, George Skjellerup, or GW as he was known.

Danish Australian immigrant George Skjellerup established his first Para Rubber store in Christchurch in 1910. The company expanded into manufacturing under his guidance.

Today the Skellerup group of companies develops, markets, manufactures and distributes technical polymer products and vacuum pumps for a variety of specialist industrial and agricultural applications. It is a global company headquartered in New Zealand, with operations in Asia, Europe, the United States and Australasia.

"GW used to treat us all as his family. He would walk around the factory and talk to you. One day he shook my hand and said 'I'll be seeing you, I'm going to England but I'll be back,' and of course, he didn't return because he died there." George Skjellerup was 74 years old when he died in 1955.

Monk says of all his Skellerup memories over the years, meeting GW that day is his favourite, along with seeing the large photograph of the Skellerup boss on the wall in the office every day. "I always found that picture so inspirational," he says.

"He came here with nothing just about and started this company. He was a goer, a worker."

Modern managers can learn from George Skjellerup's management style, Monk believes. And the company itself has continued GW's approach to this day.

"It makes a difference. Management are real people. We see them around every day. It makes it a good place to work," he says.

Monk specialised in cutting footwear pieces for many years, becoming a leading hand. Skellerup treated him to a trip to China last year in recognition of his contribution to the company as Monk was instrumental in helping set up the Jiangsu footwear factory in 2005-06.

In his 60 years of service, Monk has witnessed tremendous evolution in Skellerup's business and New Zealand manufacturing as a whole.

Technological change, computerisation, health and safety awareness, increasing emphasis on exports, production moves to China: these are just some examples.

While the Woolston Skellerup facility is now four times the size it was when

Monk began his service, some things have not changed.

Skellerup's gumboots are still hand made to ensure their quality, even if the manufacturing is in Jiangsu, China.

When he's not on the factory floor in Woolston, Monk spends his time working out in his home gym, cycling or glaring at his garden. "It helps if I don't water it, then the grass doesn't grow," he says.

Handling the rubber Flexiflo extrusions at the factory every day is very physical, so work is Monk's 'gym'. How does he manage to keep so fit? "I don't smoke and I only drink to be social, but I'm not very social."

And is there any hint of retirement in the future? "Not work? I'd go mad if I didn't work. It's the only way to keep going," Monk says.

Photo caption: Monk Jones working on the Flexiflo rubber extrusions in the Woolston factory. Flexiflo makes rubber to go on conveyor belts for use in industries such as mining.