Our new Tauranga Plant Set to Open Soon

In early 2020, we shared the news that our new $400 million manufacturing and distribution centre for GIB® plasterboard would be built in Tauranga and would be one of the largest plasterboard manufacturing and distribution centres in Australasia spread across a 67,000 square metre site.  

Now nearly three years on, the new site is in the final phases of construction and it’s exciting to see how far it’s come. We’re now focused on getting the facility fully operational, which includes the full commissioning of the plasterboard and compound production lines over the coming months. We’ve built up a 100 plus strong team of permanent staff, combining the enthusiasm of new local faces alongside the experience of our existing whānau, with many having worked for Winstone Wallboards for many years.

When fully operational, the new Tauranga site will have 50% more production capacity than the existing Auckland manufacturing site as well as room for future growth, which means we’re setting ourselves up to supply plasterboard for Kiwis homes and buildings for many years to come. 

It also gives the organisation the ability to bring new product innovation online, as well as continuing Winstone Wallboards’ commitment to plasterboard manufacture in New Zealand and supporting local suppliers, distributors, workforce, and communities along the way.

On the distribution side of the operation, what many people don't know is the North Island freight-into-store distribution will also relocate to Tauranga.

The site is ideal for distributing product throughout the North Island, as it is located near the Port of Tauranga with the delivery of the raw materials used to manufacture our GIB® branded plasterboard close by.  We’ve also built a 50,000-tonne gypsum storage shed, which allows larger cargo ships to deliver gypsum from international suppliers.

With a bigger site, the Tauranga facility will have a much-improved layout that supports more streamlined movement of vehicles. Our despatch warehouse has a fully enclosed canopy that is more than 115m long, allowing all-weather loading of up to six truck and trailer units at the same time, plus room for up to an additional two truck and trailer units in the tie down area at the end of the canopy.

From July we will transition dispatch of North Island Freight into Store services in phases from Auckland over to our new larger Tauranga distribution centre, ensuring that there’s no impact around the supply of GIB® plasterboard and accessory orders with the opening of the new Tauranga site. In fact, with a larger facility and more capacity, we anticipate that we’ll be able to improve many aspects of our distribution, allowing us to focus on delivering the best service we can for our customers.  We are keeping the current Auckland warehouse that supports Delivered to Site services and the Wellington and Christchurch distribution facilities and Christchurch manufacturing will continue to operate as normal.