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“P.N’s Multi-Million Dollar Mystery Company”

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Description: This image was published in the May 14th, 1978, edition of the Tribune weekly newspaper with the caption “The smallest... and the biggest. Mr Peet holds one of the smallest parts his company handles, while behind him the racks of Palmerston North's biggest warehouses stretch into the distance.

An excerpt from the article by Stephen Stewart read: “It's got stock worth $7 million retail in a warehouse that's the second-largest in New Zealand. The warehouse is on a 10-hectare site in Palmerston North. The building and site development cost around $2 million. "And 95 percent of the people in Palmerston North have no idea what we are doing, or even where we are,"' the manager of Consolidated Motor Distributors Limited, Mr M. V. Peet, told the Tribune. The huge warehouse is in Robert's Line, and holds all the parts and accessories for the Toyota company's range of vehicles in New Zealand. But even some of the company's travellers don't know where it is, he said, even though it's Toyota's national parts distribution centre. The multi-million-dollar parts operation was modelled along the lines of modern warehouses in other parts of the world, and incorporates Japanese and American design technology, he said. "It's the best and most modern warehouse in New Zealand, and on a par with anything overseas today, excluding the warehouses with automation," Mr Peet added.”

This image forms part of the Manawatū Evening Standard Negative Collection. Unfortunately, only negatives between April and December 1978 are held.