92 | In-house joinery for high-end market Bates Joinery designs and builds joinery for new residential builds and some commercial applications, ranging from kitchen and bathroom units to wall units, wardrobes, stairs, and timber doors and windows. Bates Joinery T T Hugh de Lacy JOINERY It’s been around so long – 68 years, in fact – that Bates Joinery has become an icon of the Christchurch building scene, thriving through the city’s turbulent years producing whole house-lots of joinery for new and mostly up-market homes. Both founder Reg Bates, and his son Greg Bates, who took the company over from him, have passed on, and Bates Joinery is now owned by Mark Allworthy, who has been with it since his school days. Mark completed his joinery apprenticeship with the company, gaining both his trade and his advanced trade joinery certificates, then working his way up the ranks to be off the factory floor and into the administration of the business in the late 1980s. Mark took over the company in 2008, and today it operates out of a 1000sqm factory with 20 staff on Shortland Street in the Christchurch suburb of Wainoni. Bates Joinery designs and builds joinery for new residential builds and some commercial applications, ranging from kitchen and bathroom units to wall units, wardrobes, stairs, and timber doors and windows. “Most of our work involves producing complete joinery lots for houses at the mid-to-high end of the market,” Mark says. “We’ve done multi-million-dollar houses in Queenstown, as well as in the pricey suburbs of Christchurch, including Fendalton in the city and the Port Hills. “Current projects include big houses at Kennedy’s Bush on the hills and at Ohoka on the plains, both of them architecturally designed residences, and we recently completed a commercial project, fitting out the new Jamie Kay Store in the Crossings Mall. “In the past, we’ve had design work done for us by agencies, but we have our own inhouse designer these days so we can offer the complete service.” A member of the Master Joiners Association, Bates Joinery has enjoyed significant success in that body’s annual competitions, including the 2022 regional award for best kitchen joinery. Mark says the trends in kitchen design these days are towards wood grains and veneers, with darker colours being preferred, and green coming back into fashion. Similar trends are apparent in bathrooms, he says. “The residential building market is a bit patchy at the moment, but the signs are there of an impending recovery. “We’re being asked to do a lot of quoting right now, and that must flow on to a greater workload somewhere down the track, but we’re not sure when.” Mark is blessed with a loyal, skilled staff, many of whom have been with the company almost as long as he has, and he’s never had trouble finding and keeping staff, even through the recent building downturn. “I’ve got excellent staff and I’m not looking to expand the business any further in the foreseeable future,” Mark says. Materials pricing is something of a constraint on the market, but that’s a problem that doesn’t look like it will go away any time soon. “Costs have stabilised to some degree lately, but every year we see them going up between 2.5% and 5%,” he says. P r oud ly s up p or t i n g B A T E S J O I N E R Y WWW.JBFABRICATION.CO.NZ 027 330 3409 SALES@JBFABRICATION.CO.NZ S p e c i a l i s T S i n d e c o r a t i v e m i l d s t e e l a n d b r a s s Email: ruben@rubensjoinery.co.nz For hand crafted: Timber double hung sash windows, Casement windows and doors, Solid timber stairs and balustrades.
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