Customer: Winstone Wallboards
Main Contractor: Fletcher Construction
Concrete slab contractor: Conset Construction
Foundations contractor: Brian Perry Civil
Product: Firth Certified Concrete
With building product shortages and supply issues hot topics in the news for the New Zealand building and construction industries as they navigate New Zealand’s current building requirements, the construction of the new Winstone Wallboard’s plant in Tauranga, which kicked off at pace in January 2021, will be welcome news to many.
Located in the Tauriko business estate - on a site over two and a half times the size of the current Penrose site - the new facility is scheduled to open in 2023 and will ensure Winstone Wallboards is ideally placed to meet New Zealand’s future demand for plasterboard.
The 12.8 hectare site, which when completed will have a finished pavement area of a whopping 90,000m2, will eventually consume an expected 30,000m3 of concrete and has every type of slab and foundation being used - all supplied by Firth from its state-of-the-art concrete plant based at Mount Maunganui.
The enormity of the project has seen Fletcher Construction, the main contractor tasked with the build, instil experts to work on the various stages of construction. Conset Construction are Firth’s largest customer and specialists in very large foundation slabs, Brian Perry Civil (BPC) are undertaking the concrete foundations, detailed excavation, piling and ground improvement, and Higgins Construction will carry out the external works and drainage.
With Conset Construction undertaking the large floor slabs, Firth is also supplying, often simultaneously, concrete to BPC for the foundations. “The large pours normally start at 1am and finish at about 6am which is when our normal work demands begin for the day at Firth Mount Maunganui,” says Willie Waters, Area Ops and Sales Manager for BOP. “There have been some quite large post tension floors, requiring around 400m3 of concrete at a time. We have worked very closely with Conset to get everything there on time.”
“The whole project is a combination of all different types of slabs,” say Mark Whiteford, Commercial Operations Manager for Conset Construction. “The 90,000m2 floor is the largest we have undertaken and includes different types of foundations - fibre only slabs, combi slabs (which include mesh) plus post-tension slabs. Our relationship with Firth is a long standing and reliable one.”
Adam Plimmer, Central Regional Manager for BPC talks about working with Firth. “We have been on site now for over 18 months and things are progressing well. We have a, long- standing relationship with Firth and our businesses know each other and work well together. Firth is capable of supplying huge volumes of concrete at the highest quality, at varying capacity for any project.”
“We know and trust Firth. On projects of this size things can crop up. Our team knows that it can pick up the phone and speak to Willie Waters, Gavin Allden or Cam Lee and issues can be addressed. I would say that transparency, communication and coordination are the reasons why things work so well for us when working with Firth.”
With approximately 8000m3 of concrete yet to deliver Willie says, “We have supplied the bulk of what is required with all the major pours expected to be completed by the end of November. Then there will be odds and sods required until the project completion date which will be about June 2023.”
View video on the new facility overview >