Is this the ‘coolest’ wrap in New Zealand?

How do you wrap a 6000 square metre fridge at minus 5 degrees?  When print and sign shop, Magnets NZ, was approached to turn Snowplanet’s white walls into a European ski resort, Aaron Lane, Managing Director for Magnets needed to put his engineering hat on.

Snowplanet is an indoor ski area and one of the most popular attractions in Auckland for tourists and locals alike.  Inside, a huge snowy slope, the size of which is slightly bigger than a rugby field, gently undulates up at a greater and great angle.  Real snow, created by snow machines, lines the ground in what is essentially an enormous cold store.  There are 600 metres of 10m high white metal walls beckoning to be turned into the owners’ creative vision.

The team at Snowplanet spent a year travelling to other indoor ski arenas around the world to get ideas for improvement.  What they wanted was to improve the experience, as if you were at an actual ski resort.

At this time, Aaron already had an established sign business as part of Magnets NZ, which traditionally supplies magnetic solutions to the Hardware, Manufacturing and Dairy industries.  It is also the largest Fridge Magnet manufacturer in NZ and supplier of magnetic sheet and strip to the sign and print trade.

When Aaron took over the management in early 2000 after his father sadly passed away, with his Digital/Offset experience, he branched into wide format printing as part of their service. Today they offer everything from building signage to vehicle wraps. But it had all started with fridge magnets.  Now, they had the ultimate fridge magnet challenge.

The brief was to create a better user experience by printing a winter wonderland on both sides of the ski slope.  The problem?  It was minus 5 degrees and all metal, but little did they know the challenges that would be thrown at them during installation were far greater.

They created all the artwork themselves from scratch.  Aaron hired an extra HP Latex 360 so as not to interrupt his existing print work.  They adapted the machine to print edge to edge by tricking it to think the sheet was wider.

In total it took them four months to print it all, and they managed to get 90% printed before they made their first major mistake.  An issue with the edge to edge printing meant that a fair amount ended up in the bin - that held up installation and meant 3 days of reprinting.

But the most challenging part was the installation.  They had to cover sixty 10m by 10m bays using printed magnetic sheeting in 12m roll drops of 1370mm weighing about 22 kilos each, on snow.  To make matters worse, the snow was on a slope, and it was cold.  Really cold. 

“When you are doing something completely different you have to think of the little things for everything, but some things you just can’t think of.

“For example, we bought the guys all new jackets, thermals and boots… but never imagined they’d get snow burn inside.

“We hired a specialised cherry picker on tracks for the snow, it was the only one we could find in New Zealand, but we didn’t realise we couldn’t tie it off to the wall beams as we had planned on. Once we got up onto the slope, to extend it, it would slide down the slope which is frightening when it’s 45 degrees at the top.  You really have to have innovation, smarts and perseverance in those conditions.” Aaron says.

With two spotters on the ground, and two in the cage, Aaron’s team worked from 5am to 2.30pm non-stop for 4 months, in 3 hour hits, as the temperature was too cold for prolonged work. 

“The walls needed extensive cleaning before installation.  In places it was so wet, it had to be dried off first and many of the prints had to be installed behind braces and cut around.

“The picker could only lift 200KG at full extension, so with two guys plus 22kg of magnetic, we couldn’t lift much at a time.  We had to adapt the cage to take it.“It was painfully slow and near impossible at times.”

He praises his team “My guys really stepped up.  They did it real tough.  Some people can’t even last 15 minutes working in there.  Every day I’d come in and give them a little pep talk, just made sure they had all the right gear and a warm breakfast.  It was a hard ask but they never once complained.”

When I ask Aaron why he got involved in signage when most of his business is magnets, he just says that while magnets are technical and interesting, the diversity and creativity of print and signage is his passion! www.signwriting.co.nz

This article was first published in the Dec issue of Image NZ Magazine. Nz's only magazine dedicated to sign and display businesses. Read more here

Written by Arlette Farland.

Artlette is a Director of Computaleta, the New Zealand distributor to the sign and graphics industry. Although the technology we use has changed a lot, I still believe it still takes the craftsperson to know how to design that letter, to fold that corner, and to wrap that edge. Today, we work together with sign, print, window and graphics companies across New Zealand to do just that // www.clgroup.co.nz