Before he cut the ribbon, opening the cavernous extensions of Wattie's 50,000 sq m $23.75 million national distribution centre in Hastings on Wednesday, Hastings District Council mayor Lawrence Yule recounted an "immensely proud" Wattie's moment.
"I was at an Adelaide conference last year - some of you might call it a junket - and I sat in an audience of all the Australian mayors who were giving the Australian Prime Minister absolute grief about the relocation of Heinz production from Australia to here," he said.
"For someone in my game who listens to how many people are leaving for Australia and how uncompetitive we are, it was music to my ears.
"The Australian PM said, look, we are sad we are losing capacity to New Zealand but it is because New Zealand is more competitive and has better food growing arrangements, logistics and costings. I felt immensely proud.
"My predecessor, as the mayor of Hastings, said he used to worry and wait for the phone call from somebody at Heinz to say, the Hastings factory is being closed. I don't wait for that phone call at all. In fact I watch in joy as Heinz expands here, as investments are made, as [owners] NPT make further expansions.
"If you look at some of the things that are happening in the region, such as water storage in Central Hawke's Bay, around the fact we are continuing to grow a logistics hub in combination with one of the best ports in the country - there is so much potential."
The Heinz Wattie's warehouse has had two major building projects in the past two years. The first saw 4000 sq m of new high-stud warehouse space replace lower stud facilities. The second is a just-completed addition with an extended canopy area, providing a further 3500m sq m of space. A second railway siding has been added, and an old laboratory building of 300 sq m has been refurbished and is now used as a training centre with extra offices for Heinz Wattie's export administration.
Publicly listed company NPT owns the site. Their asset manager and former owner of the site, Havelock North businessman Trevor Taylor, gave a recent history.
"When Heinz Wattie's purchased the site in 1995 they immediately on sold to my company, THT Properties Ltd," he said. "This part of the site was originally the wool scour for the Tomoana freezing works. We bought it as a distribution centre for Carter Holt Harvey and the apple packaging industry. Two years later they closed down their Coventry Rd manufacturing and shifted their distribution centre.
"But we had already started storage for Heinz Wattie's. From 1997-2002 we expanded this site by 1200 sq m for Heinz's use which was managed by Tomoana Warehousing Ltd, our logistics company. In 2002 we entered into a new agreement to lease with Heinz Wattie's. They made the decision this would be the ideal site for the National Distribution Centre and we added another 23,000 sq m. We had added 5000 sq m for the use of Tomoana Warehousing so when they took that over in 2003 it was approximately 35,000 sq m.
In 2007 THT sold the 6.293 ha site Elwood Rd property to the National Property Trust, which has since been corporatised and renamed NPT Ltd. Mr Taylor is the asset manager.
"In 2010 we entered into another agreement with Heinz Wattie's whereby Tomoana Warehousing would surrender its lease on its 5000 sq m and remove the last of the old part of the wool scour area and replace it with modern high-stud warehousing."
The scheduled finish date was seven months ago.
"Just prior to completion, Heinz announced another 50,000 tonnes of production to be shifted from Australia, to be located in the Hastings plant. I immediately got the call asking how were we going to cater for storage for the extra product."
Heinz proved to be nimble. "We presented a solution to expand again and within 24 hours we had sign-off from the Heinz board and the NPT board."
NPT CFO Marshall Maine thanked Mr Taylor for "his sheer bloody mindedness in getting us to this stage" so soon.
Heinz Wattie's national logistics manager Eric Raulet said the future was "so bright".
"There are now two railway sidings on the property - the original siding has been refurbished and a new one has been built." he said.
"These allow us to have separate import and export lanes. Having dedicated sidings for moving 2500 inwards containers and upwards of 7000 export containers brings major efficiencies to our operation."
"Using rail helps to significantly reduce local road traffic and makes for less congestion at the Port of Napier. Internationally, it's the goal of our parent company, H J Heinz, to substantially reduce freight carbon emissions by 10 per cent over five years from 2010-2015. The new and refurbished facilities at Tomoana will help our New Zealand business make a significant contribution to that goal."
He said the site now incorporated the distribution functions of the former King St site and "just about everything that can be done in a logistics group based on one site."
"We know we have used up the full area and if we continue to grow at the pace we have been, we will have to go up. We would have to look at automatic racking, storage and retrieval systems, robotic picking, voice activated picking and some other smarts which are active in the worldwide logistics market. So don't think that it is the end of the cheque book."