The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

MAJOR construction on Automotive Industrial Distributors' (AID) new Wulff Road headquarters should be completed within eight months, the company's operations manager yesterday told Tribune Business that the company's sales had recovered to 85 to 90 per cent of pre-fire levels.

AID's Wulff Road site was completely destroyed by fire last June, and another blaze erupted yesterday morning at the company's carwash at the same location.

But, describing the latter incident as not "serious", Jason Watson said: "The brushes at the carwash caught fire. They just started removing that carwash to get started with the new building, and I guess they had some kind of spark that caught on to the brushes, but everything is fine. It wasn't anything serious."

Regarding construction of the company's new Wulff Road head office, Mr Watson said: "They are doing the preparatory work now, and once they get done with that preparatory work they will be in full swing.

"I think the major construction should be completed within eight months, so probably within 10 months we should be operating from there. The cost of the initial construction is around $4.9 million. That doesn't include the interior work, so it will probably be around $6-$6.5 million."

Following last year's fire, AID split its operations between a store at the Mall at Marathon and Mackey Street. Mr Watson said those locations were performing well.

"They are doing really well. For all intents and purposes we are really fully operational. We are doing well with the retail sales at all the locations, including the preexisting Blue Hill location. We are doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 85-90 per cent of our previous sales," he added.