James Kirkpatrick jnr (centre, black jacket) with (from left) Tony Day (Day Consulting), Sam Gordon (Macrennie Construction), Russell Bartlett, KC, Hamish Firth (Mt Hobson Group), Aoife Mac Sharry (JKGL), Michael White (Macrennie Construction), Simon Williams (Williams Architects), Mark Hellyer (JKGL) and Quenten Pilgrem (Williams Architects). Photo / Michael Craig
James Kirkpatrick jnr (centre, black jacket) with (from left) Tony Day (Day Consulting), Sam Gordon (Macrennie Construction), Russell Bartlett, KC, Hamish Firth (Mt Hobson Group), Aoife Mac Sharry (JKGL), Michael White (Macrennie Construction), Simon Williams (Williams Architects), Mark Hellyer (JKGL) and Quenten Pilgrem (Williams Architects). Photo / Michael Craig
“I showed him the site and he said ‘you’re mad’ because it was going to be too bloody hard and take too much time.”
James Kirkpatrick jnr, the head of private family-owned investment and development company James Kirkpatrick Group [JKGL], recounts his vision for what is to be New Zealand’slargest new warehouse hub and how his dad first reacted years ago.
The chief executive and managing director of the company took the Herald on the first media tour of its 65ha Wiri site and its single largest investment in 65-plus years in business.
The son’s vision won the father’s confidence.
“It became pretty obvious to us that it’s a phenomenal location.
“Dad wanted this to be the very best. When we let the building contract to Macrennie Construction, he was very keen to see it completed, but he knew he would not.
James Kirkpatrick jnr: "Dad gave very clear instructions." Photo / Michael Craig
“However, he gave clear instructions about the future. He wanted this to be the best infrastructure investment in our New Zealand portfolio.”
James Kirkpatrick snr passed away in December 2024, aged 94.
The site is located between Manukau City and Auckland Airport, near the State Highway 20 motorway ramps.
It’s Auckland’s largest current development project. CBRE identified 65,000sq m of building works there.
At 352-358 Puhinui Rd, opposite Manukau Memorial Gardens, the heir’s vision has become a reality.
Like a prehistoric monument rising from the landscape, walls for the first logistics buildings are pictured at the site. Photo / Michael Craig
The first concrete walls are propped up 16m high in rows like prehistoric monuments.
The site is within a larger 200ha Southern Gateway, owned by a consortium including Graeme Hart’s Fernbrook, retailers the Normans – of Farmers fame – Euroclass and Tunicin Investments.
This is in a culturally and environmentally sensitive area of Te Ākitai Waihua, an iwi in the Manukau area.
James Kirkpatrick jnr (centre, black jacket) with (from left) Tony Day (Day Consulting), Sam Gordon (Macrennie Construction), Russell Bartlett, KC, Hamish Firth (Mt Hobson Group), Aoife Mac Sharry (JKGL), Michael White (Macrennie Construction), Simon Williams (Williams Architects), Mark Hellyer (JKGL) and Quenten Pilgrem (Williams Architects). Photo / Michael Craig
Between Puhinui Rd and State Highway 20, which runs from the airport to Manukau, JKGL has completed three years of earthworks, got power and water to the site and developed a 400,000-litre sewage treatment station.
Site of many super-props: the concrete tilt slab walls of the first logistics buildings. Photo / Michael Craig
“And who’s paid for all that?” asks Shortland Chambers planning barrister Russell Bartlett, KC, sitting in a portacom there on a wet June morning, jet planes roaring low overhead.
Footpaths and roads already formed on part of the 70ha site. Photo / Michael Craig
The first roads, footpaths, grass verges and street lights are in.
Roads will soon be vested with NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and Auckland Transport.
A Kidd Contracting vehicle on the new warehouse site. Photo / Michael Craig
A wetland has also been created to be gifted to Auckland Council with public access.
“We’ve probably spent about $200 million so far,” estimates Kirkpatrick, who is in his mid-40s, the only one of five siblings continuing in the business.
The weather wasn't great but the tour was extensive. Photo / Michael Craig
Macrennie Construction has erected precast concrete panels, made by the family-owned Nauhira Group, to form the walls of the first two logistics buildings.
The 16m panels have reinforcing steel, which are low in embodied carbon.
The Wiri site, where lettuces and strawberries once grew, is now becoming a warehouse park. Photo / James Kirkpatrick Group
Sam Gordon, a Macrennie director and project manager, says the site is now home to the largest number of precast concrete wall super-props in New Zealand.
“These are the extra-large props needed to support the full-height precast panels. Puhinui is pretty much using the whole country’s supply of them,” he said.
The Wiri site off Puhinui Rd, where a $1b warehouse park is being developed. Photo / James Kirkpatrick Group
Kirkpatrick wanted to name the team involved in planning and building the logistics hub: Tony Day of engineers Day Consulting, Sam Gordon and Michael White of Macrennie Construction, Bartlett, Hamish Firth of planning consultants Mt Hobson Group and Williams Architects’ Simon Williams and Quenten Pilgrem.
Using so many super-props for the concrete walls of the first warehouses. Photo / Michael Craig
The project could never have got as far as it has without that group, Kirkpatrick said.
JKGL has three other developments planned or under way:
Building a 6000sq m warehouse on a 1ha site, 7-23 Cain Rd, Penrose;
Developing L’Oréal distribution centre, Ōtāhuhu, built by Waide Commercial Construction;
