One of the country’s most famous food manufacturing plants has undergone significant renovation inside and out and was officially unveiled last month with a former brand ambassador, Rachel Hunter in attendance.
Tip Top’s factory in Mount Wellington in Auckland sits alongside the Southern motorway and its distinctive exterior paintwork has long been a fabric of the surrounding area. In fact, the part of the motorway that runs past it is known locally as Tip Top corner.
Now after a $40 million renovation the rainbow stripes are gone and in their place is a distinctive glass work emblazoned with the Tip Top logo. The site was originally built in the early 1960s and is today one of New Zealand’s largest manufacturing plants employing approximately 450 people.
Tip Top was purchased by Fonterra Brands in 2001 and general manager Brett Charlton says the site was long overdue a makeover. While media trumpeted the $40 million renovation as a remodelling of the outside, Mr Charlton says the exterior amounted for a small percentage of the overall cost.
“After 60 years the site needed to be refreshed,” Mr Charlton says.
“It had come to the end of its natural life and needed reinvigoration.”
The planning for the renovation goes back to 2010 when Tip Top embarked on the $40 million project to enhance its product development capabilities, improve its working environment, which included a raft of new health and safety measures, along with extensive renovations.
“We spent $18 million on our ammonia system. Where we were using 40 tonnes of ammonia, we are now using 14 tonnes. We also spent $5 million on guards and railings for health and safety. We’ve upgraded our health and safety and we’ve also upgraded our chemical storage. We’ve been renovating a manufacturing site,” Mr Charlton comments.
Tip Top was founded in 1936 by Albert Hayman and Len Malaghan in a small ice cream parlour in Wellington. It grew rapidly and now produces approximately 50 million litres of ice cream each year and exports to Japan, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Pacific Islands.
In 1997, Tip Top was purchased by Australian food processor Peters & Brownes Foods from Heinz Watties. The merger created the largest independent ice cream business in the Southern Hemisphere.
A culture of innovation is one of the keys to the company’s longevity, and today Tip Top holds a number of international technology patents. These include Memphis Meltdown (triple layer dipping) and Moritz (placing large chunks in ice cream on a stick).
Mr Charlton says the company faced the same challenges as everybody else in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis but after streamlining and reinvention is now as strong as ever.
