Pacifecon research manager Philip Dawes takes a look at the latest edition of the company’s popular News Bites report.
Each quarter at Pacifecon we deliver one of our most popular reports, News Bites. It’s a selection of hyperlinked headlines from the past three months of construction news, and includes bite-sized bulletins from our nationwide researchers.
For more than 40 years we’ve been providing researched project information on upcoming residential, commercial and infrastructure projects — and are currently reporting on more than 19,000 projects in the pipeline nationwide. Our team spends nearly 1000 hours researching each week to bring clients the most accurate and up-to-date project information possible.
News Bites focuses on big projects that are hitting the news, but we also report on thousands of smaller projects that cater to any business size. The August edition includes a lot of exciting and topical projects around the country.
Here’s a snippet of just a few that are included in the report, and some of the information we can provide on projects.
Retirement village apartments and care suites — Warkworth Oaks:
On the corner of Whittaker Road and Mill Lane in Warkworth, building number three of this retirement village will be a five-storey (plus basement) building with 90 apartments. The ground floor will include a care facility of 24 care suites, a gymnasium, a 50-seat residents cinema, wine bar, and three retail shops.
Work could start as early as March next year, and our estimate is that it will come in at $79 million. We’ve reported on the planning and resource consents — lodged and issued — as well as information on the developers, lead architect, engineers, consultants, builders, and more.
New diesel storage at Marsden Point:
Work started in April 2026 on this $21.6 million Regional Infrastructure Fund initiative involving recommissioning and converting idle storage tanks at the former refinery site to add 90 million litres of extra diesel storage capacity (roughly eight days’ worth of national supply) to boost New Zealand’s fuel resilience.
The project also included construction of pipeline connections to Channel Infrastructure’s system, the installation of new pumps, monitoring instrumentation, and the cleaning of tanks.
Ten-storey residential development in Christchurch:
A new apartment tower, the Williams on Worcester Residential Development, is planned at 192 Gloucester Street, bordering Gloucester Street, Manchester Street, Worcester Street and Huanaui Lane. We estimate it will come in at $103 million, with work expected to start in the first quarter of next year.
Currently in the early planning stages, we’re reporting on the developer, designers, engineers and builders at the moment, with details being updated regularly.
Six schools to receive building upgrades:
$56.6 million has been committed for facilities upgrades at six schools — Kerikeri High School, Northland; Pinehill School, Auckland; Hutt Intermediate, Wellington; Natone Park School, Wellington; Ashburton Intermediate, Canterbury; and Maruawai College, Southland.
Work is already underway on some of the projects, including in Kerikeri, where 12 two-storey transportable classrooms have been designed. We estimate this project to cost $15 million, including asbestos removal and demolition of two blocks, a 16-space car park, sports turf and hard landscaping, and an accessible footpath connecting the new maths block.
Other projects of interest that we’re reporting on include the unbuilt data centres for Microsoft and Amazon, with locations in Invercargill and Auckland.
The $3.5 billion, 78,000sq m AI data centre proposed for Invercargill is expected to create around 1200 jobs during the construction phase of the project.
There’s also plans for a large cluster of data centres in Auckland, billed as a $7.5 billion investment in the country’s digital infrastructure.
Stay on top of what’s happening out there
You can stay on top of developing projects like these, as well as thousands of others throughout the country, with a subscription to Pacifecon’s LeadHub, where you can also find out exactly who’s working on each one.
Our free August News Bites reports on more than 110 projects taking place around the country. For the full News Bites report, go to
www.pacifecon.co.nz/newsdownload.aspx, download your digital copy, and read the full story from its original news source.
