SMALL business owners across Hamilton breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday, reopening after the five-day “circuit-breaker” lockdown.

Finchetts Plumbing manager, Michael King said the business closed over the lockdown period, only available for emergency situations.

“We were pretty much shut down and we were only open to doing emergency and farming works,” he said.

“It was still difficult for us to fully understand what was happening.

“We made the call Saturday morning that we were going to shut down as per instructed.”

Mr King said the closure made the rest of the week busy.

However he said it was important to the lockdown into perspective.

“Lots of work on this week and shutting for those days didn’t help us but there are a lot of businesses worse off out there and we were only shut for three days and when you put it into perspective, three days is minimal,” he said.

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