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Property specialists are scrambling to find Fonterra a massive 7ha of indoor Auckland warehouse space to store its mounting milk powder pile.
Finding indoor space equivalent to the colossal Sylvia Park shopping centre or Westfield Albany - both around 70,000sq m of indoor space - is proving hard, even in these tough economic times.
John Dakin, chief executive of Goodman Property Trust, said yesterday his 90ha $1.6 billion portfolio was almost fully leased and he would be hard-pushed to accommodate Fonterra.
"We're doing our very best to help them with that. We're working with them and the agency community to find space in our portfolio but there's not a lot because that's a very big requirement," Dakin said.
He calculated that Fonterra was seeking the equivalent of around 14 rugby fields of indoor space. Finding this area would be impossible in any single structure.
Goodman's biggest building is the 6ha Enterprise Park at Wiri, such a huge building that it is divided into 10 bays internally. Fonterra wants to hold back product until prices recover but highly productive dairy farmers combined with sinking international commodity prices have created the storage dilemma.
Dakin said Goodman might have about 15,000sq m of warehouse space available across a number of Auckland buildings but the brief was a hard one to fill.
Reports in the past week about the problem said the dairy giant had signed a lease on one Auckland warehouse and might be close to agreeing to take another but that seven sites were being considered.
A Fonterra spokesman said the business never disclosed inventory levels.
"We're not going to comment on speculation, whether it's in the media or in the public domain," he said.
Dakin calculated that his firm owns buildings with an indoor floor area equivalent to 130 rugby fields.
