About Us

In the early 1960’s, the first NZ Cemac company was formed by the late Don Treseder, who operated a family based group of companies based in Lower Hutt involved in Construction, Traditional Joinery and High Quality Fittings. Cemac Modular Industries Ltd (incorporated 1962) manufactured a range of Office Partitions, Access Floors, Suspended Ceilings and Toilet Partitions under Royalty Licence to Cemac Pty Ltd.

Meanwhile, Cemac Pty Ltd acquired A J Brookes Pty Ltd and the partition business of the merged acquisition was known in Australia as Cemac/Brookes, then more latterly Cemac Interiors. In the early 1970’s the complete operations of Cemac Pty Ltd were bought by publicly listed investment company Hooper Baillie Industries Pty Ltd whose wide portfolio of business interests included Hide Tannery, Wine Making, Translucent Sheeting, Jewellery, Optical Goods, Food Preserving Equipment, Footwear and Cotton Growing!

On to the 1970’s and Cemac Pty Ltd took a minority shareholding in the NZ operations owned by Mr Treseder, including Cemac which was the marketing, sales, product design and contracting operation in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. A relationship with J W Backhouse in the high quality office furniture market, and a joint venture in Hong Kong with Jardine Mathieson and in Singapore and Malaysia with Sime Darby all added to the rich history of Cemac. In 1974 Winstone Ltd acquired the NZ operations, and after 5 years sold the Commercial Interiors Fit-Out business to Graeme Cromie. Cemac Commercial Interiors as a trading name was born.

In the 1980’s the NZ wide Commercial Interiors business was acquired by Alex Harvey Ltd (who soon after amalgamated and formed Carter Holt Harvey). CHH then acquired from Hooper Baillie the Australian Commercial Interiors business.

Bringing an end to public company ownership, in 1993 the Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch “branches” of Cemac Commercial Interiors were subject to management buyouts, and the success of these is borne out by the fact that these individually owned businesses are all still trading today. The 30th anniversary of private ownership is nearly here!