Mainzeal

James Weir at Stuff reports:

The high cost of repairing leaky buildings is a big factor in commercial builder Mainzeal’s receivership, an industry source says.

Mainzeal Property and Construction, begun more than 40 years ago, was put into the hands of receivers yesterday.

It employs more than 400 people.

The firm is the country’s third-largest construction company, behind Fletcher Building and Hawkins Construction. …

A source said Mainzeal had been effectively killed off by several leaky apartment buildings that it was repairing, some of them costing many millions each to fix.

Mainzeal had been involved in their construction, but ended up as the “last man standing” because others involved, such as architects and designers, had already folded, the source said.

Profit margins on other projects had been too small to cover those repair costs.

Another victim of leaky homes. Very sad both for the economy, and for those directly employed or sub-contractors.

Some of their existing projects may continue on in receivership, as they are presumably individually profitable. So the impact may be less than we expect. But still bad news, and somewhat surprising considering the construction boon. But one big job you make a loss on can wipe out lots of jobs with small profit margins.