Kia ora mai tatou

The month of June brought our fiscal year to an end, a year of two very different performance levels from a sales perspective, with the June quarter’s run rate more than 20% down on the rest of the year. As indicated last month, this lowering of demand has allowed us to focus on processes and activities to improve our lead times and be more precise about what things we could do, and when, to make it easier to transact with us. This will continue to be the case as we push to restore our service levels to where they were in 2021, and then push on to be even better. At the same time some of the team will be exploring and implementing initiatives to improve our sustainability footprint.

There is still a great deal of interest and focus on the new facility in Tauranga and at the end of last month we celebrated three significant events to herald the beginning of our trading activities in Tauriko. In a programme that was led by Tamati Tata of the local Maori community, we completed

— Blessing of the building
— Blessing and unveiling of two Pou that adorn the front of the building, and
— Return of the Whenua to the site which had been held in safekeeping at Taumata Primary School

The event heightened our anticipation for the completion of the project which, with the new capabilities and capacity of the operation, will put us in a much better position to produce a range of products, systems and services that will lead to a better built environment for New Zealanders.

And while much of our attention has been centred in Tauranga activity, several of our team are working on the reconfiguration of our Auckland footprint as we look to exit the Felix St site and rationalise our distribution footprint. We are hopeful of completing this within the first quarter of calendar 2024.

Ngā mihi

David Thomas

General Manager

Winstone Wallboards