Placemakers Dunedin, in Burns St, is among 20 buildings across the country selected for the installation of more than 8000 solar panels in total.
It is part of a rooftop solar retrofit programme FortHill Property, an industrial investment fund established by Otago-founded construction company Calder Stewart, will roll out across its entire portfolio.
General manager Nick Maier said work on Placemakers Dunedin was expected to take place next year.
“The type of system you’d expect at a building of that size would be between 25kW and 50kW.
“That could be anywhere from 75 to 150 panels, just depending on the final design and the panels you select.”
The business estimated the programme would provide a potential generation capacity of more than 4 million kWh per year.
It announced yesterday it had launched a $50 million capital raise from its $432m national industrial property fund to expand its portfolio across Otago, Christchurch and Auckland.
Placemakers Dunedin was currently FortHill Property’s only asset in Otago and they were “very excited” to be coming back into the market again, Mr Maier said.
“The interest rate cycle is right, the property cycle, we think, is good timing — we are really keen to attract investment.
“Often it’s out of the business, off-farm, intergenerational family kind of activity.
“We’re really proud of our kind of unique connection with Calder Stewart, which was originally founded in Milton, and the ability to grow what is now a national-scale investment fund originally started from those kind of humble beginnings.”
It typically looked at investments anywhere between $5m and $50m, with a focus on industrial sheds, Mr Maier said.
“What we can find, where we can find it — if it meets our criteria, then we get straight into it.”
While their preference was to target the capital raise towards the funding of new buildings, the extent to which that went towards any of its wider green initiatives was case by case dependent, he said.
FortHill had also partnered with ASB and New Zealand tech firm Tether to install AI-powered energy monitoring systems in 13 industrial facilities as part of a year-long pilot designed to identify energy usage patterns and reduce tenants’ operating costs by up to 30%.
