With some assistance from iwi leaders, the two parties reached a settlement on a new collective employment agreement.
Federated Farmers meat and fibre spokeswoman Jeanette Maxwell welcomed the settlement, subject to worker ratification, that would see the Talley family-owned Affco back in full production.
More than 900 workers had been locked out of Affco's eight North Island plants since negotiations collapsed at the end of February.
At a time when the red meat sector strategy called for unity, working together and for making opportunities happen as a whole, it was, as Mrs Maxwell wryly said, "a bit of a fly in the ointment".
Like most disputes, there were problems on both sides - and she was hearing both sides of the story.
Each side felt they were going to hold out until the end but, in reality, there had to be compromise "somewhere along the way".
There was relief that the workers were back at work - "no-one likes seeing people out of work" - that the company was back in business and farmers coming into the beef kill and under pressure to get stock away could go back to supporting Affco, she said.
Some Federated Farmers members had been getting anxious but, with a settlement reached, Affco suppliers would be relieved.
As far as farmers were concerned, the action caused some inconvenience but it was near the end of the lamb kill and the beef kill was coming on stream now, she said.
An interesting point was that there would have been no contractual supply agreements broken because Affco suppliers did not supply under contract.
It would be interesting to see how the dispute affected the company's bottom line, she said.
Although there used to be industrial action involving meat companies on a fairly regular basis, it had been a long time since that had occurred and it was also unusual to see action on the scale of what had recently taken place, she said.
