Within 20 years it is expected that upper North Island population and freight volumes will double and that 50 per cent of the country's GDP will be produced in the golden triangle bounded by Hamilton, Auckland and Tauranga, Tainui says.
Pohio said consents were for light industrial uses.
The scheme would look like Highbrook, the big industrial business park in East Tamaki. Highbrook's wide roads, architecturally designed buildings, extensive landscaping and attractive urban design were aspects that Ruakura would look to learn from, Pohio said.
Last year, the Waikato-Tainui tribe declared its asset base had risen from $925.1 million to $1.06 billion, of which Tainui Group Holdings had $840 million as at March 31, 2014.
"When I came here in 2006, the assets for Tainui Group Holdings totalled $340 million. We've been able to grow the portfolio not just in terms of $500 million but also in extracting value from land which formed the original treaty settlement in 1995 - a total of $170 million," Pohio said.
"Extracting the value has been a process of managing a diverse property portfolio, extending capital by investing in The Base, in the Novotel Auckland Airport and more latterly extending resource to get through the regulatory process for Ruakura and the more significant for the medium and longer term is what we've done in diversifying the portfolio.
"We've also grown our relationships with banks, advisers, with our business partners so joint ventures have been an integral part of this."
Pohio was in Auckland yesterday to meet NZ Superfund chief executive Adrian Orr.
"We've observed how they've brought together a significant portfolio. Today is about just recognising the connections we've made over the last five years especially," Pohio said of that meeting.
Tainui is now looking for a new chief executive but Pohio, who leaves today, could not say whether that person must be Maori.
