Friday, March 29, 2024

Skellerup moving into new home

Avatar photo
Skellerup Holdings was so thorough in its planning for the new dairy rubberware manufacturing plant in Christchurch it has ended up with two rubber mixing plants.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

That was to enable the transfer of operations from the old earthquake-damaged site at Woolston to the new facility across town at Wigram without any loss of production.

While the old mixing plant was kept going, the new plant was also set up at Woolston as part of the design process and to prove that it worked, chief executive David Mair said.

It was then dismantled and moved to Wigram where it was reconfigured to better suit the planned layout.

The new $60 million plant has been operating for several weeks as the base for Skellerup’s manufacturing of tubes and liners for use in milking sheds and as the distribution centre.

The rubber mixing plant was the centre of operations and equivalent in height to a three-storey building, Mair said.

The old plant would be taken down and moved to Wigram along with all the other advanced technology equipment used in making rubber goods.

Mair hoped to have the transfer completed by the end of March. The final fit-out and commissioning of the new plant was still in progress.

Skellerup has been at the Woolston site for nearly 80 years but the land was significantly damaged in the September 2010 and February 2011 earthquakes.

Operations there were spread across 18 buildings on two sites, one owned by Skellerup and the adjoining site leased. The new building allowed for everything in one facility, with room for growth.

Skellerup bought the site from Ngai Tahu for $6.6m in 2013.

Before setting-up the purpose-built facility, Skellerup and builder Calder Stewart Industries had to work out exactly how it operated as it did, engineering manager Geoff Harnett said.

“Answering that was like solving the biggest jigsaw puzzle and it took four years to pull apart and re-assemble.”

Because Woolston was an 80-year-old building, the team couldn’t just consult the drawings, he said.

The array of networks – electricity, hydraulics, process water, air-conditioning and ventilation – had been developed over time and the analysis had to work out how they all fitted together.

A lot of the planning for the new building was done in a digital format, from laser-measurements of all the manufacturing equipment.

Skellerup supplied NZ dairy farms with the rubber liners and tubes as well as exporting to several other countries.

The business going well though times remained tough for farmers, Mair said.

The latest increase in milk price forecasts was not yet leading to more buoyant sales. 

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading