Silver Fern Farms

Silver Fern Farms is New Zealand's leading marketer, producer, and procurer of premium grass-fed meat with operations in China, the US, the UK, the Middle East, and personnel in Korea, and Japan. 

With the pandemic serving as a catalyst to rethink its future of work, Silver Fern Farms came to Unispace with a simple desire; “create a workplace experience where our people feel more energized and enriched when they leave.”

Housed within a Category 2 heritage-listed building that was once Dunedin’s Central Post Office, the Silver Fern Farms hub needed to pay homage to the company's rural roots in a fresh and dynamic way while supporting flexible, project-based work. 

Silver Fern Farms' post-Covid workplace strategy is geared toward face-to-face collaboration. Working with a 0.7 desk sharing ratio, the new layout includes 'innovation' and 'discover' zones with dedicated long and short-term project rooms. 

The ‘discover’ zone includes a digital terrace, connecting the Dunedin hub with Silver Fern Farm sites nationally and globally.

Previously held off-site, the tasting kitchen provides a space for in-house product development, cooking demonstrations, and marketing, and is also where Silver Fern Farms' internal ‘MasterChef’ competition is live-streamed to its people across the globe. 

Break-out spaces on either side of the kitchen allow staff to have informal catch-ups, with subtle colored lights illuminating the overhead kitchen shelves when product demonstrations are in progress. 

“We wanted a cutting-edge space that our design and innovation team could use to showcase and create products. Previously they did this off-site so it’s great to be able to bring this in-house and allow our people to see what’s going on.” Julie Cooper, Organizational Development Manager at Silver Fern Farms

Warmth is achieved within the heritage building through thoughtful layered materials giving new life to the base build architecture. Bringing the outside in, internal plantings fill the voids and moss green walls, a nod to their farmers, connect the brand to the space.

“The beautiful thing about the moss wall is that it is alive and changes over time depending on the humidity in the building.” Anna Parbury, Associate Design, NZ

The project was delivered in two stages with construction works restricted to business hours Monday to Saturday to avoid disruption to a hotelier occupying the upper floors of the building. Our Project and Site Management teams managed this successfully, with phase two works completed 10 days early with zero complaints from the building tenants.

“The space is transforming the way we work together, and this is reflected in our engagement scores. There’s chatter around the Dunedin community about this iconic building and how it's been repurposed in a way that is respectful of its heritage which is important to us.” Julie Cooper, Organizational Development Manager at Silver Fern Farms

This project was featured in the NZ Herald - read the article here.