The former Winstone Wallboards site at 37-41 Felix St, Penrose, Auckland is up for sale. The Fletcher Building subsidiary owns this 5ha property. Photo / Colliers
The former Winstone Wallboards site at 37-41 Felix St, Penrose, Auckland is up for sale. The Fletcher Building subsidiary owns this 5ha property. Photo / Colliers
Opinion by Anne Gibson
Anne Gibson, Property Editor for New Zealand's Herald, has been writing about real estate since 1985 and is a skilled and knowledgeable journalist with deep insights into property as well as other businesses.
After 52 years, Winstones is quitting Penrose, ending a long manufacturing history; apartment/townhouse developer Wolfbrook hunts north for staff; a liquidator tells just how deathly the market is right now and car vending machines look unlikely to arrive soon – all in today’s fortnightly Property Insider.
If you’ve got Gibon your walls, chances are it came from here.
But now the owner wants out, after a huge investment further south.
Fletcher Building is selling its 5ha Penrose wallboard manufacturing plant, replaced by the new state-of-the-art $400 million Tauranga factory, being supplied by gypsum from Australia directly into the Port of Tauranga.
Penrose is a valuable site which has hit the market in the downturn.
Auckland Council values 37-41 Felix St, Te Papa at $60m and shows how immensely under-developed the site is: 5.08ha of land with only 3100sq m of floor area on it.
An aerial view of Winstone Wallboards' new $400m factory in Tauranga. Photo / Supplied
The new Tauriko site in Tauranga is more than twice that at nearly 13ha, showing just how much manufacturing has changed.
Tauriko began production in September 2023, pumping out more wallboard faster and more efficiently than the old plant.
Winstone controls 94% of the New Zealand market and wallboard is heavy to import – so such a big investment made sense.
Colliers’ Greg Goldfinch is advertising the vacant wallboard site: “Occupiers, investors and developers must consider this opportunity, given it’s been many years since such a land holding in this precinct was available.”
Hamish McBeath (from left), Stewart Vaughan and David Thomas at the new plant.
The company’s Tauriko site is 12.78ha with a massive 6.7ha of floor space on it.
The site was picked with the concept of expansion in mind.
Winstone Wallboards' new Gib manufacturing plant opened at the Tauriko Business Estate in 2023.
At 440m in length, the main manufacturing and storage building stretches nearly half a kilometre and is 110m wide.
The reason it’s that long is because of the process of making a wallboard.
The compounds within the plaster need a certain length of time – running for at least 330m at a certain speed – before they enter giant kiln-style ovens to be fired.
About 2.6 million square metres of plasterboard can also be stored in the new plant’s main building, bringing manufacturing and distribution under one roof for the first time.
Winstone offers 22 different types of products, including EzyBrace, Aqualine, Noiseline, Wet Area, Fire, Tough, Reverberation Control, Radiation Shielding and Rondo products.
It first started supplying board into the market from Tauriko in early August 2023.
“By the end of August/beginning of September that year, 75% of the board range was being manufactured off the Tauriko line. By the end of December 2023 or the start of 2024, we were in full production with the remaining board range,” a Fletcher spokeswoman told Property Insider.
Winstone Wallboard’s history shows it moved into what was in 1971 a newly-built Penrose factory.
That property served the manufacturer for 52 years.
We are due to hear more from Fletcher next month when its full-year result for the June 30, 2025 year is out on August 20.
Wolfbrook hunts north
Christchurch’s Wolfbrook Residential has recruited about six staff from Auckland and Tauranga lately.
CEO Guy Randall cited a string of reasons for people heading to his city.
“It’s due to lower house prices, less traffic, a perception of less crime, lifestyle reasons and the energy in Christchurch is pretty good. People come down for the weekend to a music festival and go ‘let’s move here’,” Randall said.
Guy Randall is chief executive of Wolfbrook Residential which has its headquarters in Christchurch. Photo / Guy Randall
Wolfbrook has built 1100 new townhouses and apartments but is moving to more standalone places around Halswell.
Property management has become a big business after buying Du Val’s book and two others to give it more than 2000 homes to look after.
And Wolfbrook bought its first Queenstown property, at Shotover Country on Ladies Mile where it plans 42 terraced homes, Randall said.
It has built more than 200 new Kāinga Ora homes in the last few years and Randall said when the market turned down, Wolfbrook had picked up all those contracts.
Christchurch remains its HQ and where Wolfbrook is building 70% of its new homes.
Kāinga Ora is no longer in the market for new homes.
“The market is flat but there are always opportunities there,” Randall said.
Far worse than the GFC
When a liquidator says things are bad, you know it’s grim.
Gareth Hoole of Ecovis said: “I’ve never seen people suffering the way they are.”
The global financial crisis in 2007/08 was mainly property-related, whereas this downturn is far wider and affects more people, Hoole said.
Falling house prices would be a shock to many: “People always thought property won’t go down in value, but guess what? It did.”
Car vending machines
Singapore already has a car vending machine, opened by Autobahn Motors last year. Photo / Telegraph
Eye-catching multi-level glass car vending machines in many countries overseas are yet to arrive here.
Mark Francis of luxury car storage business Matchbox doesn’t expect them here soon.
“I have looked at this concept. It’s possibly a bit gimmicky and I am not sure if New Zealand is ready for that,” Francis said.
Last decade, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and United States car maker Ford unveiled an unstaffed car vending machine in China’s southern city of Guangzhou.
The machines in Asia and North America are often about five storeys tall.
Matchbox members' lounge and storage facility.
Matchbox Auckland.
The Chinese ones had 42 cars, of various models, including the Ford Explorer SUV and Mustang.
Francis and fellow car enthusiast Zlatko Filipchich started Matchbox, which is this country’s first members-only luxury car storage building.
It is at Penrose’s Great South Rd.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald‘s property editor for 25 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
