Gull New Zealand opened its new office at its Mount Maunganui fuel terminal today.
The office relocation, which started in 2017, included more than $9 million in safety and environment enhancements at Gull's key Mount Maunganui terminal.
After working in a cramped, basic portacom for 20 years, Gull's terminal managerChris Toms was thrilled to finally give his six team members decent facilities that future-proofed this key asset.
"I'm very proud of the improvements we've made over the last four years.
"The changes to improve the reliability of Gull's operation and improve safety systems, all have been implemented while maintaining a very busy operation of over 1200 truck movements and around four ship discharges each month, " Toms said.
Toms said Gull's two most recent employees, Chad Osborne and Jessica O'Driscoll, cut the ribbon to officially open the new facility.
With storage of around 91m litres (the equivalent of what 60,000 average family vehicles use in a year), the terminal was one of the three largest fuel terminals in New Zealand and had been the key asset securing Gull's supply chain for the last 23 years."
Gull general manager Dave Bodger said the upgrade stood the company in great stead for the next 23 years.
"While we had a great facility already, Gull now sells over three times what we did 15 years ago, this additional investment maintains our facility as state of the art and ensures this key gateway infrastructure for Gull will be resilient to meet our ongoing needs and growth," he said.
Key pieces of the upgrade in addition to the office included new firewater tanks, upgraded fire main system for foam and water, installation of in terminal gas detectors that will note the presence of fuel vapour, increased bund capacity, upgraded emergency shut down systems for use in tanker discharge, improved CCTV coverage of the terminal, upgrading of internal pipework at the terminal to be fire-resistant, removal of auto-fill system for service station and installation of containment for firefighting foam.
