Wiri plant to supply Countdown
Countdown’s 142 North Island supermarkets are to be supplied from mid-2020 by a $100 million state-of-the-art meat-processing factory to be built at Wiri, south Auckland.
It’s the first development in New Zealand for big Australian developer Logos, which bought a
10-hectare industrial parcel of land at Wiri in July last year for an industrial park.
It’s also a first investment in New Zealand for international food processing group Hilton Food Group, for whom Logos is developing the big processing plant and will lease it to Hilton for 25 years.
In October 2017 Countdown and Hilton announced a new partnership in which Hilton would build a new processing facility in Otahuhu, an extension of the existing site. But the site for the plant will now be at Wiri.
Logos, Hilton and Countdown’s Australian owner Woolworths have announced Logos will build the 15,700 square metre facility for Hilton Food New Zealand to supply exclusively to the Countdown supermarkets in the North Island.
Woolworths New Zealand managing director Natalie Davies said its current plant in Portage Rd, Otahuhu, would close and staff move to the new, modern and larger facility at Wiri. No redundancies were expected. It was decided the Portage Rd site was not suitable for a large-scale processing plant.
This week Countdown confirmed with the seafood team that seafood processing would also be moving to the new Hilton plant in
2021, a bit later than the meat team. Countdown employed 300 people in the meat and seafood teams. They would maintain their existing terms and conditions at the time they moved to the new plant.
Countdown has more than 1200 local farmer suppliers. Last year all of its fresh chicken, lamb and pork was sourced from New Zealand as well as 97 per cent of its beef and 96 per cent of its seafood.
The partnership with Hilton would enable Countdown to provide more range and innovation in its meat products at a faster pace. Convenience and easy meals were key for Countdown customers, Davies said.
Last July there was much speculation that global warehouse retailer Costco would be the first tenant when Logos bought the
10-hectare site from Fletcher Building subsidiary Fletcher Concrete and Infrastructure.
Logos’ head of Australia and New Zealand, Darren Searle, said he was well aware of the speculation but could not confirm whether or not Costco was looking at a tenancy.
Logos was focused now on the Hilton facility, its first tenant in the new industrial estate. It was also completing a 45,000sqm food processing and distribution building for Hilton at Heathwood Logistics Estate in Brisbane.
Logos expected the lion’s share of the tenants at the Wiri estate to be large companies in e-commerce and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) looking for space to build very large facilities.
‘‘In some instances that brings new technologies, automation, high bay warehousing, and different approaches to the cubic capacity that these operators require.’’
Logos was developing many sites like these in the Asia Pacific. It saw New Zealand following the move of Asia to bigger storage and logistics space.
‘‘Some of those tenants have been talking to us about New Zealand which gave us confidence to enter into the New Zealand market and buy this estate. We are in advanced discussions with a number of those tenants but I’m not ready to disclose those at this particular point.’’
The first stage of development at the Wiri estate would offer
55,000sqm, which included Hilton, but that could double as more land was developed.
‘‘It will be tenant-led but we would anticipate that the first stage of this will be built out in the first two years.’’
However, that would depend on the complexity of what went inside the facilities.
The total cost of building the Hilton factory was $100m, Searle said. Hilton had committed to a
25-year pre-lease of the factory, its first investment in New Zealand.
Hilton would invest up to $50m for hi-tech processing plant and equipment inside the facility. Logos would continue to own the land and building on which the factory stood.