Two Companies To Change Premises

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30560, 1 October 1964, Page 18

Two Companies To Change Premises

Two Christchurch companies, the Park Davis Trading Company, Ltd., fruit and produce auctioneers and merchants, and the print-ing-ink manufacturing firm of Morrison and Morrison, Ltd., both plan to take possession of new premises on February 7.

In the case of Park Davis, an entire new market site spread over an acre with under-cover parking facilities for 50 to 60 buyers’ trucks is planned at Morrison and Morrison’s present factory site at 208210 Madras street.

Morrison and Morrison had bought the Tudor Hosiery Company’s single-storey factory on three-quarters of an acre at the corner of Ward and Selwyn streets, for under £30,000, said Morrison’s technical manager (Mr J. O. McGiffin) yesterday. Three-street Access The chairman of directors of Park Davis (Mr P. D. Murray) declined to name the price that his company paid for Morrison’s. Neither would he disclose what Park Davis paid for a quarter-acre Lichfield street property, adjacent to the recently purchased Madras street property of Morrison and Morrison, to give Park Davis three-street access at its new market site. The purchase of the quarter-acre Lichfield street property belonging to the estate of H. P. Bridge, combined with the purchase from Morrison and Morrison, will give Park Davis access to Lichfield street, Madras street and Tuam street at its new premises. Park Davis would retain its present premises at the corner of Madras street and Bedford row, said Mr Murray. “We are, of course, always open to offers,” he said. “But they would have to be pretty good.”

The present premises of Park Davis, he said, would be used for subsidiary work of the company such as packaging and storage. Mr McGiffin, of Morrison's, said his company, since its merger three years ago with Printing Inks and Machinery. Ltd., of Auckland, required smaller accommodation in Christchurch. This was the reason for the move, and the sale of the 208-210 Madras street premises to Park Davis.

Morrison’s new factory in the old Tudor premises, he said, apart from a few specialised lines, would largely concentrate on production for the South Island market only. Elaborating on Park, Davis plans for its move to its new market premises, Mr Murray said that his company, in its

new premises, would have a common boundary with Radley Bros. Supply Company, Ltd., in Lichfield street, when Radley Bros, had moved to its planned new premises. Another fruit and vegetable auctioneering firm, the Macfarlane Trading Company, Ltd., said Mr Murray, would also be moving into the same locality. “We will all be transferring our premises 300 yards,” said Mr Murray. “It sounds silly. But we will each have four times the area that we have in our present premises today.” What, in effect, was being created by the new series of purchases by the fruit and vegetable trading companies, said Mr Murray, was an entirely new “market block" for Christchurch.

Mr Murray said that last December his company had bought a further quarter acre site, on the opposite side of Lichfield street to his company’s future market block, for the parking of a further 40 cars.

All parking at the new Park Davis market, said Mr Murray, would be off the street. Considerable structural alterations, he said, would be made to the new premises before his company moved in for business. The sale of the Tudor Hosiery property to Morrison and Morrison was negotiated by Ford and Hadfield, Ltd.