Early earthworks on stage one of the nearly 500ha Ruakura Superhub. Photo / Supplied
When even a roomful of infrastructure heavy hitters struggle to get their heads around the scale of your plan for New Zealand's biggest integrated commercial development, you start to suspect you're on to something big.
That's what Tainui Group Holdings (TGH), the commercial arm of Waikato-Tainui, discovered 16 years ago when it unveiled a 50-year vision for a supply chain support behemoth nudging 500 hectares at Ruakura, Hamilton.
But TGH has hung on and today the first buildings are rising at the Ruakura Superhub, predicted to be an economic powerhouse not just for the Waikato region, but for NZ Inc.
Everything about Ruakura is big.
It will incorporate a 30ha inland port, a 167ha industrial and logistics park, 108ha knowledge zone, more than 3000 new homes, a 5ha retail and service centre, 50ha of green space, and create up to 12,000 jobs.
But the biggest challenge for the comparatively tiny TGH in getting to this month's official opening has not been keeping faith in its vision through years of red tape and local politics - or even the investment required.
It's been getting people to understand the opportunity of Ruakura, says TGH chief executive Chris Joblin.
"At different stages there have been different challenges but the biggest has been getting people to realise what we see. When you can go from telling people to showing people, you get that mind shift."
The challenge was the same back in 2006 when Ruakura was just a glint in the eye of Joblin's predecessor Mike Pohio.
It was Pohio, now chief executive at Ngāi Tahu's headquarters in Christchurch, who came up with the idea of a master-planned, purpose-built future for the Ruakura land returned to Waikato-Tainui as part of the 1995 Treaty of Waitangi settlement.
He recalls Boffa Miskell, one of TGH's main consultants on Ruakura, in 2007 calling a "charrette". That's the term for a gathering in a room of all the technical experts needed for a major project. They were asked to identify issues and practicalities and how the road to resource consent applications for Ruakura might be approached.
"It took them some time to better understand the scale," recalls Pohio. "These were national consulting firms but not on this scale before or [with] the inter-connectedness of the various activities."
Since then Waikato people and the upper North Island freight and logistics sector have regularly been told Ruakura, equidistant between the ports of Tauranga and Auckland, is coming.
But it's only relatively recently, when earthworks started and mega-sized buildings for some big-name tenants began taking shape, that Ruakura has really pinged on the general public's radar. Cue Joblin's reference to "showing people".
The pace within the 92ha first stage picks up by the day.
Inaugural tenant, nationwide transport firm PBT, started operating from its initial 4000sqm facility this month, the centrepiece inland port will open later this year, and big facilities are being built for Danish shipping giant Maersk, Kmart and Big Chill.
Waitomo Group isn't far away from offering energy and fuel sources and fast food outlets will be open by Christmas in the service centre.
But for travellers on the adjacent new Waikato Expressway, it will be the opening of the TGH-Port of Tauranga joint venture inland port, likely in December, that will show that a potential economic giant has woken from its long rural slumber on the city's eastern outskirts.
Joblin says that what people will see of the inland port's first 9ha stage are two rail sidings coming off the main east coast rail line between Tauranga and Auckland, a 6ha "hard stand" where shipping containers are manoeuvred and stored, and trucks busy unloading and loading them. Initially, containers will come from, or be destined for, the Port of Tauranga.
The first stage of the port will have capacity for up to 90,000 containers. More space will be added as required. Increased use of rail is forecast to take 65,000 truck journeys a year off the region's roads once the port is fully operating.
After a slow motion run-up, the future is coming in a rush.
With 70 per cent of the first stages leased or under offer, Joblin says there is "huge" demand for space and TGH's 50-year vision is "looking a lot shorter now".
"The development out of Ruakura is going to happen a lot faster than we, or anyone else, thought."
To understand Ruakura's potential for an economy at the bottom of the world that relies on a functioning supply chain - and why it's taken 16 years to get this far - it's back to Mike Pohio and his 2006 lightbulb moment.
Before joining TGH that year, Pohio managed the container terminal at Tauranga, the country's biggest port and main export gateway.
The job gave him an overview of the port's inland operation at Auckland, MetroPort, and how complementary an inland port could be in the supply chain.
His mentor was shipping expert Tony Boyle, who set up Tauranga's container terminal, and Boyle was the first person Pohio turned to after reviewing TGH's property portfolio and seeing the potential for an inland port and major industrial development.
Around this time TGH, with local residential developer Chedworth Properties, had applied to the Waikato District Council for a district plan change providing for a housing subdivision at Ruakura.
"In the first instance, the message from the tribe about that was that 'it's taken 140 years to get some land back, we don't want to sell a develop-and-sell proposition'. Strategically, it didn't make sense, so converting to a develop-and-hold plan was the initial concept," recalls Pohio.
"Then with 500ha, a major scale [project] required something quite unique, and with the east coast main rail line and the yet-to-be-built Waikato Expressway, you could see the convergence of major infrastructure with 500ha around it."
At this time the Waikato Expressway wasn't scheduled to be built until 2028-29, and there was an agreement between Waikato District and Hamilton councils to move the boundary of Hamilton city out to the expressway.
With all these factors in mind, and believing that operators in South Auckland close to the Tauranga and Auckland inland ports would outgrow their sites, Pohio conceived a Ruakura inland port complemented by major industrial sites.
He figured the larger operators would need more land, and with the value of their South Auckland sites rising, they could sell up and relocate to Hamilton's lower priced land, pocket the difference, and still be close to rail and the new expressway.
Another Pohio foresight was that in 50 years the ports of Tauranga and Auckland wouldn't have enough space to meet their growth needs. But he figured a large-scale industrial development would still enable cargo flow through those ports in 50 years.
"In effect, our standard of living is dependent on New Zealand having an extremely efficient supply chain to get out exports to markets and allow imports to come in.
"I recognised that an ordinary industrial development would be competing with existing well-heeled, well-connected developers in Hamilton so it needed to differentiate itself."
To test the economic viability of the Ruakura idea and how it could benefit NZ Inc, it was time to call in an independent opinion. Consultancy Castalia gave it the economic tick and then followed the charrette in 2007.
Then came engagement with Hamilton City Council and the beginning of a long-running battle to get resource consents for Ruakura.
Pohio recalls the "outstanding" legal services of Hamilton-based environmental specialist barrister Jim Milne and the work of property management expert Tony McLauchlan, also a local.
Red tape struggles continued until 2009, when TGH got a break.
The Waikato Expressway was declared a road of national significance, its scheduled construction moved forward 10 years from the previous 2028-29 plan. (The expressway has recently been completed.)
"We could see with this new timeline the convergence of road and rail, and that we had something that was able to be conceived of, and development started, but we needed to get our ducks in a row," says Pohio.
Those ducks included getting Ruakura recognised as a proposal of national significance. This would allow TGH and its residential developer partner Chedworth Properties to circumvent objections to a city council plan change to accommodate Ruakura.
By 2014 TGH had secured Environmental Protection Authority support for the plan change, and the Minister for the Environment referred TGH's request to a board of inquiry for a decision.
After six weeks of considerations that year, the board approved the application by TGH and Chedworth to rezone the Ruakura land from rural to "employment and residential" uses.
Ruakura had its green light.
Pohio, having seen the project "brought to life", left TGH in early 2015 after nine years as chief executive.
He was among 300 guests at the official opening this month and liked what he saw.
"I am specially pleased the company has continued with the scale initially intended. It could have been just another industrial development with relatively small-sized tenants." Maersk, for example, has taken 4.5ha and its coolstore facility will cover more than 1ha of that.
"The other thing I'm exceptionally pleased with is that Ruakura has been embraced now more widely by those who can see the opportunity that was conceived but was somewhat difficult to understand at the outset."
What is probably yet to be fully grasped about Ruakura is its potential for multiple economic flow-on effects.
Pohio says the tenants and those still to come will need professional services and other providers.
"This will benefit the growth of Hamilton city. Through the growth of Ruakura, there will be a renewal of the city itself. The reach of the economic benefit will be much wider than just those buildings you see."
Tainui Group Holdings CEO Joblin says that so far, $108m has been invested in Ruakura's infrastructure. This includes $56.8m from the government and $5m from the city council, with TGH providing the balance.
He says the value of the Superhub is fast approaching $1b, taking into account this infrastructure investment, development of new buildings for Kmart, Big Chill and PBT, the value of the land and ground leases to Waitomo Group and Maersk.
Joblin says of the 490ha currently deemed to be part of the Ruakura Superhub, around 78ha is targeted for possible residential development. This would provide for around 3230 sections, depending on final agreement with the city council.
"To offset the 78ha ... we will be looking longer term to rezone 100ha of adjacent land owned by TGH east of the Waikato Expressway to industrial zoning, thus essentially maintaining the overall commercial and industrial footprint."
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson, at the official opening, said Ruakura had made it this far due to "dogged determination and courageous investment" by Waikato-Tainui and TGH.
Joblin prefers to call it tenacity.
"We always had self-belief. We were always confident around the rationale and the reason for Ruakura. We always knew it would be successful."
He salutes the first companies to arrive at Ruakura.
"For some it was a leap of faith.
"Being first is always hard."
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