A United States coolstore business at the centre of a Covid-19 outbreak in Auckland delivers frozen goods to supermarkets and fast-food outlets.
Auckland is now in alert level 3 lockdown and the rest of New Zealand is in alert level 2 after authorities uncovered community transmission of Covid-19 in South Auckland.
The first case to test positive, known as the index case, is a person in their 50s who lives in South Auckland and works at short-term loan provider Finance Now on Dominion Rd in Mt Eden.
The husband of the index case works at a Mt Wellington coolstore facility owned by New York Stock Exchange-listed company Americold.
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Three additional Americold employees at the Mt Wellington site and seven family members of those workers have since tested positive for Covid-19.
Americold has 160 staff members across four coolstore sites in Auckland at Mount Wellington, Wiri, Auckland Airport and Manukau. It also has facilities in Palmerston North and Christchurch.
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Americold owns and operates 183 sites in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.
Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield on Wednesday said testing of all those who worked at Americold and also of the environment of the Mt Wellington facility was under way.
Bloomfield said he was not ruling out the possibility that refrigerated products held by Americold were contaminated with the virus and the source of infection.
While that was an “unlikely” scenario, the coolstore environment had been swabbed in an attempt to rule out the possibility, he said.
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Americold’s campus in Atlanta, where the company is headquartered.
Americold works with retailers, food producers, processors, distributors and quick-service restaurants in New Zealand.
Americold managing director Richard Winnall said it supplied frozen goods to supermarkets.
He said it was “very improbable” that Americold workers had been infected by Covid-contaminated products.
The products at the Mt Wellington facility were all frozen goods, he said.
Some were manufactured locally and others manufactured overseas and imported by sea from about 15 different countries, he said.
He said all imported product was frozen sea freight and could take “many weeks, if not months” to arrive in New Zealand.
The company’s Mt Wellington and Auckland Airport facilities were now closed.
All but one of its 20 Auckland Airport staff had returned negative tests, he said. Should the final result come back negative, that site would reopen, he said.
Ryan Anderson/Stuff
Americold in Mount Wellington, Auckland, has closed and the facility is being tested for Covid-19 contamination.
In June Americold said it was investing about $65 million on expanding its Wiri site.
World’s largest coolstore
Valued at US$7.8 billion (NZ$11.8 billion), Americold owns and operates 183 sites in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina.
Americold describes itself as the world’s largest publicly traded real estate investment trust focused on the ownership, operation, acquisition and development of temperature-controlled warehouses.
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Americold’s facilities are part of a supply chain connecting food producers, processors, distributors and retailers to consumers.
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Americold has a US$7.8b market capitalisation on the New York Stock Exchange.
It has thousands of customers, employs nearly 13,000 staff worldwide and processed 725 million cases last year.
In Australia it has facilities in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.
In 2010 Americold bought rival Versacold International to create the world’s largest temperature-controlled warehouse company.
The deal included $57m for Versacold New Zealand, which had more than 450,000 cubic metres of refrigerated space in New Zealand.
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The index case who tested positive for Covid-19 worked at Finance Now at 114 Dominion Rd, Mt Eden.
NZ-owned short-term lender
Bloomfield said the Covid-positive Finance Now employee had contact only with people in a small team at work, but everybody in the workplace was being treated as a close contact.
The office was now closed. The company would not comment.
Incorporated in 2000, Finance Now is a small-loan lender owned by Invercargill-headquartered SBS Bank, which has assets of $4b.
Finance Now’s website says 530,000 New Zealanders have used its service in its 20 years of operating.
More than 1500 retail stores use Finance Now’s financing option services including The Warehouse, Target Furniture, Pit Stop, Pascoes, Noel Leeming and Big Save.
In 2017 it acquired The Warehouse Group Financial Services, which included the Purple Visa and Warehouse Money Visa cards.
It offers 24-hour turnaround loans ranging from $1000 to $20,000 with annual interest rates ranging from 12.95 per cent to 29.95 per cent.
It lends to people without incomes, if they put their income-earning partner’s name on the application. Loans range in maturity from six months to five years.
An update on the company’s website said Finance Now had been listed as an essential service and would continue to operate and assist customers with financial needs.
Its teams in the Auckland office were working remotely, it said.
