Company came to Hornby and has grown with it

Press, 17 October 1978, Page 17

Company came to Hornby and has grown with it

How this enormous warehouse came to be in Hornby is an interesting story in itself, and part of Hornby’s own story of rapid growth in the last two decades. In the early 1950 s G.U.S. Wholesalers Ltd, was operating out of old premises on the corners of Williams, Coventry and Cavendish Streets in the southern part of Christchurch. Even though a new warehouse was built on the site and the company’s offices were removed to an old threestory building in Manchester Street, the Williams Street premises became intolerably crowded. Efficiency suffered because the warehouse was far too small as turnover increased. The company found that the costs of expanding the Williams Street warehouse further and of building an office by it would have been prohibitive. The company found a source of finance for building a new head office warehouse five times the size of the Williams Street building (50,000 sq ft against only 10,000 sq ft in the old building) plus a new office building. The condition was that the company move its entire operations to Hornby. This was unprecedented in Christchurch until that time, although overseas the trend for such businesses to move away from expensive land near the centre of cities to cheaper commercial and industrial land in fringing suburbs was already well under way. The suggestion provoked opposition from almost every quarter — retailers, manufacturers and staff all expressing reluctance to move from the city centre. But the company could see no way of securing adequate premises more cheaply or to the better advantage of the company itself, and to the public who would benefit from a more efficient warehousing operation.

The warehouse took 12 months to build, the

money being put up from outside the G.U.S. companies and the building then being leased back to the various G.U.S. concerns. When the building came into use in the mid 19605, the turnover was about SBM a year; now it tops more than SIM a week.

More recently, the hardware and drapery warehouse has also been located in Hornby, adjacent to the original building. Besides the two Hornby warehouses, the company has branch, self-service warehouses on two other sites in Christchurch and at Timaru, Ashburton, Blenheim, Nelson and Greymouth, All of these, except the warehouse in Greymouth, are connected by on-line computer to Hornby. Having brought a major business to Hornby, the company has continued an active interest in the progress and prosperity of the suburb. The Hornby Mall is only one aspect of this. G.U.S. Properties is also involved in other commercial and industrial developments in Hornby, leasing industrial and commercial sites and buildings to a number of well-known Hornby establishments. Opening day at a supermarket is the close of months —■ even years —of detailed planning. Bearing the brunt of much of the work required for setting up the new Hornby Supermarket was G.U.S.’s Modernisation Department — a team of specialists in the planning and equipping of supermarkets. Following in their footsteps came the departmental specialists — grocery, meat, fruit and produce, etc., who plan the stocking and opening day like a military exercise. Then the staff move in, pre-trained at other supermarkets under the direction of Super Value supervisors. When the doors of the new Hornby Super Value supermarket open on Tuesday, October 17, it’s the end of a long, hard road for the G.U.S. “behind the scenes” staff.