Toyota NZ warehouse expansion

Toyota New Zealand has completed the third expansion in 15 years of its parts warehouse in Palmerston North. The latest extension now provides a total of 35,000 square metres of space.

With a budget of nearly $20 million, this project is Toyota’s biggest single investment in New Zealand, far outweighing any previous capital expenditure.

“We carry around $28 million of inventory, which is quite space hungry when you think about the huge variety of large items, such as bumpers, headlights and sheet metal, that we are required to stock," said Spencer Morris, Toyota New Zealand general manager of finance, planning and after Sales.

The next phase sees attention now shift to optimising more than four rugby fields of available floor space, with newly designed inbound and outbound areas to improve workflow and safety.

Following this, a complete re-layout of the storage area will commence. This will further enhance safety and efficiency and is expected to take around 18 months to complete.

At the same time, seismic strengthening work will be conducted to bring the older parts of the building structure up to the latest building standards.

This was the third warehouse expansion project Toyota New Zealand have undertaken in the last 15 years and reflects the sustained growth in parts demand on the back of record new and used vehicle sales during this time.

“This expansion allows us to supply more than 95 per cent of daily orders off the shelf. These are shipped overnight to our network of 66 dealers around the country,” says Morris. “Without the space we have here, we simply couldn’t meet this commitment to our customers.”

The warehouse now employs more than 40 people, an increase of more than 30 per cent over the last 10 years. 

“Our growth has far exceeded our plans so we may be back to the drawing board sooner than we thought. It’s a good problem to have.”