Nishin Cool Store

136 Bush road was a vacant lot bought by Steven Zhang to build an owner occupier cool store for his personal business Nishin Cool Store. The development also included two other substantial buildings to be strata titled into smaller office and warehouse storage. These two additional buildings have been put on hold till they are leased or pre-sold. Steven Zhang tendered and started construction himself without involving any consultants or a Project Manager. This opened up various construction delays, incomplete and disjointed design management, coordination and the construction programme was very large.

Greenstone was employed from November 2018 to the completion of the project in May 2019 which incorporated over half of the construction programme. Steven Zhang was a very motivated client who wanted to build a purpose-built large cool store for himself to remove the requirement to have to hire multiple premises to store his frozen imported products and to centralise all of his operations from one premise.

The key challenges for Greenstone when we were brought on board was to assess the lay of the land. Work out where the hurdles were, and target solutions to get the project moving. This involved resolving outstanding design queries and shop drawings while motivating the design team to respond quickly and accurately. This enabled the contractor to focus on delivery and forecast programme time lines.

The reason the client chose this area to build his cool store is very relevant. There was literally no other cool stores of its type in the area. It is central to the northern motorway, within 10 minutes of the central city and ports of Auckland, being key for the imported frozen foods that Nishin supply to their many clients such as Foodstuff. This gives Nishin an advantage with service clients in the greater Auckland area.

The facility now is a fully functioning cool store at approximately 4,500 sqm. Comprising of an upstairs and downstairs administrative box, two -5C cool stores and two large -25C cool stores. We have a strong relationship with the client Nishin who have now asked Greenstone to be involved in the next two buildings on this site. Our responsibilities will be to compile financial feasibility for the next two buildings, not only consultant and construction costs but forecast sale pricing and tenant rental. Ultimately to help the client arrange construction finance from his preferred bank.