Search Topic

Business development assistance

City design and planning

Education

Grow Wellington

Emergency status

i-SITE Online Intercity Coach bookings

Explore our city

Events in our city (WOW)

Living in our city

Tourist attractions in Upper Hutt

Whats On Where

Events in our city (WOW)

Library

Looking for a book to read? Check out the Library website!

H²O Xtream

Feel like a swim? Visit the H²O website for all the details!

Last Modified: 30 April 2013

Upper Hutt City

This is Upper Hutt

Upper Hutt City

Located 30 km north-east of Wellington City, Upper Hutt boasts 70% of the region’s parks and reserves, along with state-of-the-art entertainment and leisure facilities. 41,600 people call Upper Hutt City home. From Silverstream to the Rimutaka Hill summit, the city encompasses an area of 540 square kilometres.

Big opportunities

There are many opportunities for businesses within Upper Hutt, including available stable flat land, ICT infrastructure, and well-connected close road and rail links. We also have a well-educated local workforce, a gorgeous green setting, a strong connected community, a relaxed lifestyle, a range of urban and rural housing options, and multiple business support networks available to help.

Over the past 12 months we have had 27 new businesses (commercial and retail) open in Upper Hutt. This includes The Pet Centre, The Art of Pizza, Thai House Express, Jetts Gym, Porterhouse Blues Bar, Envirocomp (a nappy composting plant), Revera (an IT infrastructure company), and Transfield Services.

Upper Hutt is gaining unprecedented attention from multiple directions. We are also seeing conversion of previous manufacturing facilities into vibrant centres for smaller industrial businesses, high-tech manufacturing, film props, and data centres.

Lower business rates

A recent comparison of business rates revealed that businesses outside of Upper Hutt on average pay 2.8 times more in rates.

We are ‘open for business’

Council is committed to operating in a business friendly manner and being open to support any opportunity that will increase employment growth. As a Council, we are committed to break down perceived barriers, being solution-focused for all those who choose to build here.

Residential growth

From July 2010 to June 2012, over 230 new residential dwelling consents were received by Council.

Statistics

With one of New Zealand’s largest workforces available within the Wellington region, you can call on highly skilled, mobile and well-educated people, whatever your business focus.

Consistent with the total New Zealand population, 39% of Upper Hutt residents,aged over 15 years, have a post school qualification.
The median income is $26,900, compared to a national median of $24,400.
The median age in Upper Hutt is 36.4 years.
Government administration and defence made the largest contribution to overall growth between 2010 and 2011, growing by 13.1% over the year.
Wholesale and retail trade was the largest industry in Upper Hutt in 2011,accounting for 24.6% of total GDP.
GDP in Upper Hutt measured $799 million in the year to March 2011. This was up 0.9% from a year earlier.
Economic output in Upper Hutt’s construction sector grew by 7.9%in 2011, compared with 3.6% growth in the sector nationally.
Economic output in Upper Hutt’s metal product manufacturingsector grew by 11.5% in 2011, compared with 7.3% nationally.

Significant businesses in Upper Hutt

Upper Hutt is attractive to many big businesses and lots of small ones too. Major industry sectors and employers with a presence here include:

Government: Defence, Department of Corrections, IRD, and the NationalCentre for Biosecurity and Infectious Disease.

Distribution: Foodstuffs.

Manufacturing, building, and infrastructure: Transfield Services, AcmaIndustries, Real Steel, Evans Engineering, Golden Homes, Dews Construction,and Wedgelock Equipment.

Service industry sector: Revera, Lockheed Martin, and Hewlett-Packard.
Animal health: MSD Animal Health.

Retail: The Warehouse, Farmers, Briscoes, Mitre 10 MEGA, Smith City, Big Save, Whitcoulls, Dick Smith, Noel Leeming, Hallensteins, Ballentynes, Amazon, Paper Plus, Warehouse Stationery, Countdown, PAK’nSAVE.

A lifestyle focus

The city offers a very attractive lifestyle for families and residents. For residents, it means reasonably priced housing options that are likely to have more space than most inner-city housing. For families, Upper Hutt has many excellent
preschools, primary, and secondary schools. Wellington’s Victoria University and the region’s many other tertiary institutions are all within easy commuting distance for Upper Hutt students.

Nestled between bush-clad hills along the Hutt River, Upper Hutt’s unique location provides easy access to native forest and riverside walks, swimming, fishing, and river kayaking, hunting, gliding, and tramping. For mountain, trail,
and quad biking enthusiasts, Upper Hutt is the perfect playground. If golf is your passion, we have four courses to choose from, including the prestigious Royal Wellington Golf Club based in Heretaunga.

The history of our city

Upper Hutt derives its name from an English Member of Parliament, Sir William Hutt, who was a director of the New Zealand Company (formed in the late 1830s) that organised the settlement of the Wellington and Hutt Valley areas beginning with the arrival of the first immigrant ships from 1840.

Orongomai is the old Maori name of the area where Upper Hutt now stands. It means "the place of Rongomai". He was an ancestor and patron of the tribes whose ancestors came in the Kurahaupo canoe. According to their traditions the captain was Whatonga, ancestor of the Ngai Tara and Rangitane tribes. By his first wife Whatonga had a son, Tara-ika and his descendants, the Ngai Tara, were the first people known to live in the Wellington/Hutt Valley area and the harbour was named for Tara.

The Ngati Rangi came and were defeated by the Ngati Ira, who in turn were defeated by Tamiti Waka Nene of Ngapuhi and Te Rauparaha of Ngati Toa at Pa-Whakataka across the bank from what is now Te Marua. Eventually the Taranaki people, Te Atiawa, occupied all of the Hutt Valley shortly before the Europeans came, with villages at Te Hau-Karetu (Maoribank) and Whirinaki (Silverstream).

Early Maori names for the river were Te-Awa-Kairangi and Heretaunga. Upper Hutt was settled right at the beginning of the European colonisation of Wellington. Richard Barton, its first resident, arrived in 1840 on the "Oriental", the second of what is known as the first four ships. He made his home at Trentham in 1841 in the area now known as Bartons Bush. The first town settler was James Brown
in 1848.

Upper Hutt was originally part of the Hutt County, constituted in 1877. On 24 April 1908, it was proclaimed a Town Board and the first seven Commissioners were farmer GI Benge (first chairman), milkman RH Williams, farmers A Martin and JT Craig, butcher WR Keys, builder J Harrison and painter FH Wilkie. The first secretary was AJ McCurdy, an outstanding character in this areas local politics. He became first Mayor when Upper Hutt became a Borough on 26 February 1926.

On 28 May 1966 it was proclaimed a city. The northern areas of Rimutaka Riding of Hutt County were brought into the city on 1 April 1973 to give Upper Hutt the second largest land area of any New Zealand city. It grew in size again on 1 November 1988 when the former Heretaunga-Pinehaven Riding was incorporated upon the abolition of the Hutt County Council. Exactly a year later the City of Upper Hutt as it is today was constituted with the abolition of the Heretaunga/Pinehaven District Community Council.

Top