Drains and roads at the Ruakura Superhub construction site, which Hamilton City Council Photo: The Detail/Sharon Brettkelly
Hamilton City Council expects the development of industrial land will help the city through any national economic downturn this year.
Last year the city's industrial consents rose by 144 percent, mainly due to the Ruakura Superhub development.
Ruakura is New Zealand's largest industrial development and includes an inland port where imports and exports will be offloaded or loaded onto trains and transported to ports in Auckland or Tauranga. It has been a project for Waikato-Tainui for over a decade.
Unlocking the land has required long-term strategic rail, road, and other infrastructure investment, and the support of national and local government.
Hamilton City Council growth funding and analytics manager Greg Carstens said industrial developments were less likely to be influenced by short-term economic cycles.
"Industrial numbers tell us more about the health of the economy, potentially, than the residential sector, largely because it is employment development," Carstens said.
He added that industrial land often had two levels of employment value, firstly in the construction and then in the ongoing business use.
"That investment leads to employment, it leads to expansion of business, more GDP. There is a reason that land is called employment land."
The council's September 2022 quarter economic report noted that large industrial businesses tended to plan strategically into the long-term, rather than looking at the next three to five years.
"The momentum in Ruakura could well pull non-residential consenting through a downturn," it said.