Centrepac directors eye village expansion

One of the Bay's biggest kiwifruit packhouses is being sold so two of the owners can raise more money to expand the nearby Althorp retirement village and hospital.
Centrepac in lower Pyes Pa Rd - which handles more than one million trays of kiwifruit a season - will be auctioned by Bayleys on August 17.
The 5000 square metre facility, built in 1985, has five cool stores, the packhouse, dry storage and offices, and is leased by post-harvest operator, Apata. It has a capital valuation of $5.5 million and attracts rent of more than $500,000 a year.
Apata, which packed and supplied more than nine million trays of kiwifruit and avocado last year at all its facilities, has a Pyes Pa lease through to 2020 and two further four-year rights of renewal.
"The buildings and maintenance is right up to scratch and we are selling while the lease looks attractive," said one of the Centrepac owners, David Church.
"We want to free up some capital and do some other things."
The directors - Mr Church, Talbot Munro and David Goodwin, a kiwifruit grower - formed Centrepac Packhouse and Coolstore and bought the independently-run facility in 1992, selling the operation to Apata two years later.
The directors continued to own the land and buildings, and it was renamed Apata Centrepac.
Mr Church and Mr Munro are looking to expand their Althorp Village which started as a 60-bed private hospital in 2000. It now has 90 beds, with another 27 planned.
At the same time, they want to introduce serviced apartments for semi-dependent or intermediary care and take the number of units to 205, making Althorp as big as Ryman Healthcare's $100 million Bob Owens Retirement Village being built in Carmichael Rd, Bethlehem.
About a quarter of Althorp's 10 hectare site is still to be developed, and its community centre has a bowling green, tennis court, indoor heated swimming pool fed from a hot water bore, and theatre.
"We want to make the village more intensive and build apartments," said Mr Church.
He said Althorp had made 12 conditional sales in the past three weeks and "that's very encouraging. There haven't been many sales over the last two to three years in the recession, and maybe people have decided that things will pick up."
He said if the packhouse and coolstore facility didn't sell at auction for the right price, then the directors would continue to own it.
"It's good cash flow, and we will have to go to the bank or wait for some more sales if we are going to do something at the village," Mr Church said.
Bayleys Tauranga director Kevin Wehipeihana said if Apata decided to relocate at the end of its lease, there were sound options for redevelopment on the Pyes Pa site which was zoned commercial.
Permitted activities included general offices and retailing such as supermarkets, vehicle saleyards, education facilities or visitor accommodation such as a motel or hotel.