CAMBRIDGE NEWS | 1
FRIDAY AUGUST 30, 2019
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AUGUST 30, 2019
Huge factory taking shape By Sophie Iremonger
One of the country’s largest industrial builds is taking shape out at Hautapu – the new APL site. Currently stretching about a quarter of a kilometre, the structure is only halfway towards what will be its full length. Once completed, the 44,000 square metre factory will produce APL hardware for windows and doors, and glassware under the company’s new business AGP (Architectural Glass Products). All going to plan, the new factory – one of three being built at the site over the next eight years – will be operating by mid-March 2020, and serving customers by April 2020. It will produce 40 new jobs in the glassware department from day one, potentially building to 80 over time. Up to 100 existing APL staff will move to the new site, though the company estimates around a quarter of those
100 staff may choose to not move to the new site, meaning about 65 new jobs in total could be generated at the factory from day one. “We’re just slowly going through the process now of employing people, come December we’ll start to train the first people within the business,” said Craig Vincent, CEO of APL (Architectural Profiles Ltd). It’s somewhat of a homecoming for the company – New Zealand’s largest manufacturer of aluminium windows and doors – having started in Cambridge on Bellevue Rd in 1971 by the Plaw family. By the mid 1970s it had moved to Te Rapa, and has operated out of its Pukete headquarters since 1994. “We’re now on four sites in Te Rapa, hence the reason of wanting to consolidate on the one site going forward,” said Vincent. Mitch Plaw, a major shareholder of APL, said Hautapu was “the perfect fit in terms of scale,
location, infrastructure and servicing and the ability to create a significant connection with the local community”. The move originally came down to two potential sites which provided the 600m long boundary they required – Titanium Park in Tamahere or Hautapu’s industrial area. “There were only two sites available to us in the end, they were both in the Waipa district, and we chose the Hautapu one because of its location to the expressway, there was nowhere else that gave us the access to date,” said Vincent. “With the Southern Links project being put on hold and really not
Several companies and dozens of workers are at the Swayne Rd site each day.
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knowing where that would go, you had to look at it and say that what was available at the Hautapu site was much better, and functionally it was absolutely right for us location wise.” Land development began in January – by Cambridge companies C&R Developments and Beacon Hill Contracting. Continued on page 3