MOVE TO PAPANUI FACTORY

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32902, 28 April 1972, Page 2

MOVE TO PAPANUI FACTORY

A Christchurch manufacturing and distributing company, Spencer L. Ayrey, Ltd, will move to the former Ovaltine factory on the Main North Road, Papanui, on Monday as its first step in a building and expansion programme involving almost $500,000. The firm, specialising in hair care and beauty treatment products, will lease the Ovaltine factory on its 3 J-acre site from the owners, J. McNab and Son, builders. The two wings from the four-storey main block of the factory are already being enlarged, and a hexagonal, single-storey "educational centre” for professional hairdressers, and a two-storey warehouse and office administration block will be built in front of the main tower. The new buildings, designed by Griffiths, Moffat and Partners, who drew the perspective sketch above, would be completed before Christmas this year, said the managingdirector (Mr Spencer Ayrey) yesterday. For the first time since the firm was founded in 1957, the national headquarters in Christchurch would be in the one building, on the one site. The new buildings would double the floor space at the factory to more than 50,000 sq. ft. The firm employed 101 persons in New Zealand, 70 of them in Christchurch. When the new buildings were completed the firm expected to employ an additional 30 persons in Christchurch, Mr Ayrey said. His firm this year began exporting its products to Australia. Mr Ayrey, who was born in Waimate but has spent his working life in Christchurch, said that in 1957 he wrote to the Helene Curtis cosmetics firm in Chicago and obtained the licence to manufacture and distribute its products in New Zealand. The firm now sold to chemists and department stores as well as beauty salons; it had branches in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin.