Lack of business zoned land in the Auckland region

At the annual CB Richard Ellis annual market outlook breakfast this week, South Auckland managing director Paddy Callesen said that the fundamental issue for Auckland’s industrial sector was the current lack of affordable business-zoned land.

“The restrictions on new business land zonings for a rapidly growing city like Auckland simply cannot go on as they have over the past five years. Land will have to be brought into industrial use at the urban periphery,” Callesen says.

Callesen says occupiers such as Lion Nathan are hamstrung by the lack of industrial land available for purchase that is suitable for specific manufacturing purposes. These types of occupiers do not want to lease facilities from an institution and instead prefer to own their land in order to control their future space requirements.

“The positive news is that there may be more acceptance in the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) that Auckland does have an immediate need for more industrial land in the urban periphery. We should be seeing an increased focus at the local government level to create more greenfield development opportunities, especially around the boundary of the metropolitan urban limit (MUL),” says Callesen.