First look: James Kirkpatrick Group starts building $1b Wiri warehouse hub
“I showed him the site and he said ‘you’re mad’ because it was going to be too bloody hard and take too much time.”
James Kirkpatrick jnr, the head of private family-owned investment and development company James Kirkpatrick Group [JKGL], recounts his vision for what is to be New Zealand’s largest new warehouse hub and how his dad first reacted years ago.
The chief executive and managing director of the company took the Herald on the first media tour of its 65ha Wiri site and its single largest investment in 65-plus years in business.
The son’s vision won the father’s confidence.
“It became pretty obvious to us that it’s a phenomenal location.
“Dad wanted this to be the very best. When we let the building contract to Macrennie Construction, he was very keen to see it completed, but he knew he would not.
“However, he gave clear instructions about the future. He wanted this to be the best infrastructure investment in our New Zealand portfolio.”
James Kirkpatrick snr passed away in December 2024, aged 94.
Biggest Auckland building project
The site is located between Manukau City and Auckland Airport, near the State Highway 20 motorway ramps.
It’s Auckland’s largest current development project. CBRE identified 65,000sq m of building works there.
At 352-358 Puhinui Rd, opposite Manukau Memorial Gardens, the heir’s vision has become a reality.
The first concrete walls are propped up 16m high in rows like prehistoric monuments.
The site is within a larger 200ha Southern Gateway, owned by a consortium including Graeme Hart’s Fernbrook, retailers the Normans – of Farmers fame – Euroclass and Tunicin Investments.
This is in a culturally and environmentally sensitive area of Te Ākitai Waihua, an iwi in the Manukau area.
Between Puhinui Rd and State Highway 20, which runs from the airport to Manukau, JKGL has completed three years of earthworks, got power and water to the site and developed a 400,000-litre sewage treatment station.
“And who’s paid for all that?” asks Shortland Chambers planning barrister Russell Bartlett, KC, sitting in a portacom there on a wet June morning, jet planes roaring low overhead.
“We have,” replied Kirkpatrick.
The first roads, footpaths, grass verges and street lights are in.
Roads will soon be vested with NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and Auckland Transport.
A wetland has also been created to be gifted to Auckland Council with public access.
“We’ve probably spent about $200 million so far,” estimates Kirkpatrick, who is in his mid-40s, the only one of five siblings continuing in the business.
Macrennie Construction has erected precast concrete panels, made by the family-owned Nauhira Group, to form the walls of the first two logistics buildings.
The 16m panels have reinforcing steel, which are low in embodied carbon.
Sam Gordon, a Macrennie director and project manager, says the site is now home to the largest number of precast concrete wall super-props in New Zealand.
“These are the extra-large props needed to support the full-height precast panels. Puhinui is pretty much using the whole country’s supply of them,” he said.
Kirkpatrick wanted to name the team involved in planning and building the logistics hub: Tony Day of engineers Day Consulting, Sam Gordon and Michael White of Macrennie Construction, Bartlett, Hamish Firth of planning consultants Mt Hobson Group and Williams Architects’ Simon Williams and Quenten Pilgrem.
The project could never have got as far as it has without that group, Kirkpatrick said.
JKGL has three other developments planned or under way:
352-358 Puhinui Rd
Anne Gibson has been the Herald‘s property editor for 25 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.