John Mulvey with the safety deposit boxes whose contents are only known to their owners. Photo / Martin Sykes
John Mulvey with the safety deposit boxes whose contents are only known to their owners. Photo / Martin Sykes
KEY POINTS:
It's the Gringott's Bank of Queen St - complete with a spiral staircase and a 10 tonne steel door.
The mighty Guardian Vault has been returned to its former position beneath the Guardian Trust building at 105 Queen St.
It may not be quite as elaborate as Gringott's- the wizards' bank in the Harry Potter novels - but it is the most modern vault in the country with thick steel-enforced walls, bullet-proof glass and seismic sensors.
New Zealand Insurance opened the safe-deposit vault in the early 1930s and when the New Zealand Guardian Trust (which took over the building and the vault in the 1980s) moved into the Vero building on Shortland St in 2001, the vault moved too.
And there it remained, on level seven, until business investor John Mulvey bought the vault from Guardian Trust in May, renamed it the Guardian Vault, and reopened it at the Queen St site.
Mulvey, who also owns The Central Vault in Wellington, said customers needed somewhere to store their precious or valuable possessions, particularly during troubled times.
He said not many people realised vaults existed, but they were a way of ensuring irreplaceable belongings or documents are not lost in a natural disaster or robbery.
Businesses often store important disks or documents and Mulvey expects there are more people storing gold bullion but he wouldn't know, as only the clients knows what is in their box.
The client is also the only person who can open their vault having passed through the video surveillance, photo and signature identification and 10-tonne steel door, they lead the custodian to their box, and both their key and the custodian's master key must turn at the same time for it to open.
