Rising shopper demand for goods means The Warehouse’s giant distribution centre at Rolleston is no longer big enough. A $13 million construction project aims to make it as half as big again.

The building is already bigger than six rugby fields at 34,000 square metres and sits on 10 hectares of land in the Izone Southern Business Hub, just west on the railway line.

It was built for The Warehouse in 2002 by the Selwyn District Council, which later sold it for $15m to an investment fund.

Now another 15,000sqm will be added to the structure, along with 2000sqm of container canopies and extra racking and conveyor systems, and extra yard and parking areas. The work includes $8m worth of construction just consented by the Selwyn District Council.

Jeff Matthews, business manager for Holmes Consulting who is running the development, said the project would involve a significant amount of work and the resulting building would be huge.

Construction will be done by Naylor Love. Steel and concrete for the project will not have to come far – both structural steel supplier Pegasus and concrete maker Cancast are also in the Izone business park.

The distribution centre stores goods for distribution to all the 25 Warehouse stores in the South Island. Two shifts of up to 75 workers each operate the complex from 6am to 11.30pm.

As well as its red shed stores, The Warehouse Group owns Warehouse stationery, appliance retailer Noel Leeming, and outdoors gear retailer Torpedo 7.

The group made $2.8 billion worth of sales in New Zealand last year. Its after-tax profit was $57m, a figure it expects to better by about 10 per cent this year.

Originally published in Logistics & Materials Handling May 6, 2016