Skellerup’s Wigram factory on track to manufacture next year
Skellerup Holding’s $50 million Wigram project should start manufacturing rubber products in the first half of 2016.
Skellerup will run two factories in parallel for about three months next year to keep customers supplied.
The 104-year-old Christchurch business is shifting to Wigram Industrial Park from its Woolston factory in the east as a result of the Christchurch earthquakes. Most of the company’s 200 staff are expected to make the move.
Skellerup makes agricultural and industrial equipment including the rubber dairy liners and rubber tubing used to take milk from cows in the milking shed into stainless steel vats. The $50m includes a $30m investment in the new facility and a further $20m on other items like the move of the staff and machinery from Woolston.
Sir Ron Carter, who is overseeing the project on behalf of Skellerup, said critical ground work had been done, a significant proportion of the concrete walls erected, with work on the roof now underway.
‘‘We are only five months into the build project but it is running to our expectations.
‘‘This is a purpose-built plant and it is very pleasing that all the detailed design work is producing exactly what we want.’’
Skellerup chief executive David Mair said the relocation planning had been going on for the past three years.
Cornerstone projects included a new 100 tonne three-storey-high automated state-of-the-art rubber mixer and the installation of injection moulding equipment.
The installation of the new rubber mixing line commences in late 2015 and would be commissioned in early 2016 while the existing mixing lines at Woolston would continue uninterrupted.
Once the equipment at Wigram was fully commissioned, the rest of the associated machinery would be relocated to Wigram, Mair said The second key part of the construction would be the injection moulding hall, used for producing food-grade dairy rubber products.
Skellerup chairman Sir Selwyn Cushing said the purpose-built facility, serving the company’s agri division, would help the manufacturing team remain at the cutting edge of supplying clients with the best quality rubber products.