Fletcher Building chairman's praise for KiwiBuild

Sunday, 1 December 2019

After a rough year, Fletcher Building held their annual shareholders meeting while Ihumātao protesters gathered outside.

KiwiBuild may have failed to hit its targets, but it has brought about a culture change in the building industry, according to Fletcher Building's chairman.

'It has focused the industry around affordable housing,' Bruce Hassall told Fletcher Building shareholders.

'We are much more focused on affordable housing, and that's a trend across the industry, and that's one positive.

Bruce Hassall, chiarman of Fletcher Building, said the Government's KiwiBuild initiative had focused the building industry on affordable housing.

The Government scrapped its target to build 100,000 homes as part of Minister of Housing Megan Woods' sweeping reset of the project in September.

* KiwiBuild reset: 100,000 home target scrapped

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It is now promising only to oversee the building of a 'significant' number of new affordable homes, with monthly dashboards published to keep the public informed.

Minister for Housing Megan Woods opened Fletcher Building's Clever Core prefabricated homes factory in Auckland in October.

'The housing crisis developed over decades and won't be solved overnight,' Woods said at the reset.

'We've made a good start across the wider housing portfolio but KiwiBuild isn't working so we are changing it. When policies aren't working we are honest about that and fix them.'

Protestors outside Fletcher Building annual general meeting Ihumatao

Hassall acknowledged the Government had been criticised for failing to hits its KiwiBuild targets, but said the KiwiBuild policy had raised awareness in the building industry.

'That's come from the KiwiBuild initiative from the government,' Hassall said.

Fletcher Building was a major developer of new neighbourhoods, and on October opened a high-tech prefabricated homes factory, able to churn out hundreds of homes a year, including low-rise apartments.

The Clever Core factory in Wiri in the industrial south of Auckland would produce the core structural components of a home in a factory environment, which could be trucked to a building site and assembled, with homes able to be put up and finished within six to 10 weeks.

There had been a surge in consenting numbers, especially in Auckland, where new consents are running at levels not seen since the 1970s.

KiwiBuild was not the only front on which Fletcher Building was engaged with the Government.

The NZX sharemarket-listed company, which is a staple of many KiwiSaver funds, was awaiting the outcome of negotiations over the future of the historic Ihumātao site in the Auckland area of Mangere.

Hassall said discussions with the Government about the future of Ihumātao, where Fletcher Building had planned to build 480 homes, were ongoing.

But, he said, the company's board had been told to expect a resolution to the negotiations by the end of the year.

'The ball is currently in the hands of the Prime Minister,' said Hassall.

'We were asked to pause, and we have.'

Fletcher Building chief executive Ross Taylor expected 'fair compensation' for the land, which the company now appeared to be resigned to selling, with Auckland Council tipped to be the buyer, possibly funded by a loan from central government.

Protesters from SOUL (Save Our Unique Landscape) celebrated outside the Fletcher Building annual shareholder meeting in Auckland's Eden Park on Thursday.