Three wins in four years for firm

Phillida Perry and her husband, George Savill, own the local HRV franchise with GM Mark Silvestor. Photo / John Borren

Healthy Homes Bay of Plenty has won Auckland-based ventilation company HRV's Franchise of the Year Award for the second year running - making it three wins in four years.

Co-owner George Savill said the win was a credit to the Bay of Plenty franchise's 35-strong team.

"Our ongoing success over the past four years is testament to the effort the team put in every day and their commitment to HRV's goal of creating healthy homes for all New Zealanders," said Mr Savill, who runs the operation with his partner, Phillida Perry.

The franchise is also expanding to take in HRV's whole home water filtration offering.

"HRV's new whole home water filtration system hooks up to everything from the kitchen tap and shower head, right through to the garden hose, and allows households to control the quality of the water that comes into their home and property," he said.

HRV earlier this year explored franchising the filtration service separately, and John Gutrie and Tracie Sturm picked up the Tauranga/Coromandel franchise. The filtration system was originally developed by local Tauranga man Warren East and his partners in Kiwi Pure, which designed the system sold by HRV Water and arranged for it to be made in China to its specifications. HRV now has the rights to directly import the system for its franchisees and pay a royalty to Kiwi Pure for each system sold.

However, Healthy Homes has now taken over the water filtration service, and Mr Gutrie and Ms Sturm will be focusing on their core business, Gas and Plumbing Specialists, with Mr Gutrie continuing to do water filtration installations for HRV.

"We've worked with HRV and found a really good solution where we just do their installations," Ms Sturm said.

Ms Perry confirmed that Mr Gutrie, an experienced plumber, would be working on the water filtration installations for Healthy Homes BOP.

"All of the issues about unhealthy New Zealand housing stock can be addressed by ventilation, insulation and heating," she said.

"But we wanted to bring in products related to healthy living and water filtration clearly fits into that theme."

HRV chief executive Bruce Gordon said the company's annual awards celebrated the people who contributed to the company's ongoing success and the work it did to improve the health of New Zealanders and their homes.

"We've been operating for more than 10 years now, with a focus on creating healthy homes for all Kiwis," he said.

"The key to this cause is having the commitment from our teams all around the country to make it happen, and that's why they are worth celebrating."