Whitewear giant Fisher & Paykel Appliances has signed up one of New Zealand’s biggest builders for a radical new three-building $220 million global headquarters.

Mark Elmore, vice-president of design and brand for the Kiwi brand,
said today Naylor Love was contracted for two of the three new Penrose buildings, with the third to be a carpark, but a tenant on the site is yet to complete their lease.

“For us, this is the next platform for Fisher & Paykel Appliances to grow globally – a purpose-built research and design facility very close to a train station,” Elmore said.

Around 1000 people work for the business at its East Tāmaki base where hybrid or flexible work will result in around 700 desks but Elmore refused to confirm a $220m price, saying that was undisclosed.

A three-level cross-laminated mass timber office block was planned for the site at 830 Great South Rd and designs were completed by RTA Studio and consultant project manager TSA Management.

“That’s intended to minimise embodied carbon and be efficient during the life of the building. In terms of New Zealand, it will be a pretty large-scale mass timber structure,” Elmore said.

Bruno Goedeke, Naylor Love Construction’s regional manager for Auckland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty, said today the business had signed an early contractor involvement agreement.

That is for two of the three buildings planned at Penrose. Such contracts allow builders to become more closely involved in the preliminary work at the Great South Rd, where Goedeke said work was planned at in January.

The new heart-shaped hub would be the global headquarters for the Chinese-owned business, with administration, research and design, laboratories and testing facilities.

The move would mark an end to the whiteware giant’s decades on Springs Rd, East Tāmaki.

RTA Studio has revealed designs of the new buildings for the business owned by China’s home goods giant Haier, and Goedeke said the renders were “quite exciting”.

Cross-laminated timber to cut carbon emissions is at the core of plans.

“I’m 58, and I’ve not seen a building like this in my career,” Goedeke said, referring to designs for the new hub near Fletcher Building’s base at 810 Great South Rd.

Earlier this year, Architecture Now reported: “The move to Great South Road will see the whiteware manufacturing giant leave the East Tāmaki campus it has shared with Fisher & Paykel Healthcare for more than 50 years.”

RTA Studio’s Richard Naish is the lead architect on the job, and said the publication plans were for a 22,780-square metre site.

The site included a home building for administration, research, design and product development, a shed building for appliance prototype laboratories and a garage building for employee vehicle parking and end-of-trip facilities.

At the centre of the project is a 788m2 social kitchen where ‘home’ meets ‘shed’, effectively uniting the two.

RTA had also worked with Boffa Miskell on a landscaping strategy to regenerate the land using plants that grew there in pre-European days, the publication reported.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances’s site at 830 Great South Rd is fenced, but with few improvements.

Auckland Council listed the property as having a $16.2m valuation and being a 2.2-hectare site with a building coverage area of only 30sq m. Annual rates are $83,000.

Meanwhile, NZX-listed giant Fisher & Paykel Healthcare is also on the move, planning a huge shift to Karaka, south of the city and transacting NZ’s single largest property deal of 2023.

In May, the Herald reported how state clearance was granted for that vast expansion via a $275m land deal at Karaka.

The Overseas Investment Office released its latest decisions showing approval was granted for the company to buy 104ha from New Zealand business Karaka Meadows, whose sole director is Nelson’s Christopher John Royds.

Clearance was needed because although Fisher & Paykel Healthcare is 34 per cent New Zealand-owned, 32 per cent is in Australian hands, 15 per cent American, 15 per cent British, and the rest is owned by other overseas entities.

The company announced last September it planned to grow substantially via the land deal.

The company is part of the group, headquartered here since 1969.

“The group operates a research and development and manufacturing campus in East Tamaki. The land is currently used primarily for pastoral purposes including grazing and horticulture – a tomato hot house business – and a lease to a refrigerated produce transport business,” the clearance decision said.

Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.