Fletcher to show off stand at Eden Park

Philip King, Fletcher Building investor relations general manager. Photo / Supplied

Fletcher Building, which built the new Eden Park South Stand, has a full programme of events planned around the Rugby World Cup.

Philip King, general manager of investor relations, said Fletcher paid a one-off $424,000 for a new suite in the South Stand.

"We have a box at Eden Park for the whole series in Auckland and will be hosting customers from New Zealand and Australia.

"Different senior managers and divisional chief executives will host different games. The box holds 20 people and there are some eight games so that is 160 people in total. Having built the new stand we want to show it off, as you would imagine," he said.

King said Fletcher bosses would be running events at Eden Park and Wellington's Westpac Stadium.

Fletcher's box is positioned in the stand between the 22m mark and mid-field point.

The $424,000 payment for the box covers entry to the stand and all meals and drinks. Four-course buffet-style dinners are served in corporate boxes at Eden Park and New Zealand wine and food will be on the menu.

At the Eden Park Pavilion near the South Stand, Austin's Food Design Events of Mt Eden is planning on serving 650kg of Hawkes Bay lamb, 1.5 tonnes of New Zealand beef, 6 tonnes of boutique Kiwi cheeses, for semis and the final, all served by 300 waiting staff and 70 kitchen and back-of-house staff.

The boxes have indoor casual seating, then full glass partitions open up to tiered row exterior seating. King said investors were not top priority on guest lists.

"Where would you stop? We have about 200 institutional investors and 40,000 retail investors," he said.

International corporate shareholders had to abide by strict hospitality rules which put ceilings on acceptance of entertainment expenditure, King said.

"A lot of investors could not accept this sort of hospitality because of those limits. We took the view that we could justify having a box for corporate and supply relationships but it was harder to justify with shareholders," he said.