"There's space once used by the livestock team on the ground floor which is empty. And rooms at the back of the building, once used by buyers here for the sales, are empty. So there's a lot of space that's just not used," Mr Rabone said.
"The current store is full of poles, which means stacking and maneuvering around the store isn't easy. I'm guessing, but it's only about two-thirds of the space we're actually using.
"The guys will love the new building because it's a perfect rectangle in shape with only one row of roof supports running down the middle of it. The forklift drivers will love it."
The woolstore currently puts through between 20,000 and 23,000 bales a year but at any one time there are no more than 6000 to 7000 bales held there.
Wool coming into the Wanganui store is from farms in Taranaki, Wanganui, Manawatu and parts of the Rangitikei. It used to come in from King Country but that wool now goes to the Elders Primary Wool store in Te Kuiti.
When Mr Rabone started with the company straight out of school in 1983, the city was home to a number of woolstores, including Wrightsons' store in Nixon St and on Heads Rd, Allied Farmers in Prince St, and the two stores Dalgety's operated; one in Bedford Ave and one by the wharf.
Elders Primary Wool operates four woolstores in the South Island and six (including Wanganui) in the North Island.
"As a company, we're the only major broker that hasn't centralised to Napier," he said.
"This is an exciting commitment from Elders Primary Wool that keeps us in this city. And we took on two new staff a few months back.
"It's important to us, because when you're looking at companies moving offshore and moving out of regional centres, we're chuffed we're moving into a new building and sticking around in this region," he said.
The company has three buyers in Wanganui who are on the road full-time, along with a truck driver and three men in the store. But that's a far cry from when Mr Rabone started with the company 30 years ago.
"Over those first summer months there were up to 70 staff employed at the peak. That was when we had university students working here during the holidays, too. But everything was done manually. There were no forklifts, and the trucks were unloaded manually," he said.
"There was no sale by sample or testing. The exporters would come through and make a hell of mess with the bales then everything had to be cleaned up, the bales reweighed to make sure they were back to their original weight then stitched up again and stacked. It was very labour-intensive.
"Now the bales come in on trucks, are handled by forklift, put on to a machine that weighs them and automatically takes a sample before the bale is pushed off the back to be picked up by the forklift and stacked away again. Job done."
Some of the wool will end up in China to be used in clothing lines but the bulk is bound for the carpet mills.
Mr Rabone said the move into the new Mill Rd store was set for August 1. He said the current store had been a great place to work, but it was old and there was too much wasted space.
He said the relocation would also serve as a signal to the region's woolgrowers that, despite the tough times, the Elders Primary Wool was "sticking with them".
