When Morton Jordan established Timbertanks nearly forty years ago we built water reservoirs at one-third the cost of competitors.

What has driven us during that time has been the advantage of working with treated timber and its inherent sustainability. And when you think about it, what other living organism grows structures to be as big, strong and live as long? So we asked ourselves how could we use our timber structures to do more.

As a result we've moved into bio-digesters and ice slurry tanks - at opposite ends of the spectrum, because of timber's insulation properties, one-tank heats, and the other cools. Concrete and steel have very poor insulation properties - they attract heat rather than draw it away, whereas timber is a versatile building product that we can do so much more with.

Innovation is our lifeblood - we are leaders in this area. Many other tank suppliers are happy to provide a reservoir - '..this is our range, the sizes we offer - take which one you want.'

Whereas we revel in different challenges. We have unique experience to call on in that we have been New Zealand's only full time reservoir builder offering 100% local support and service teams.

And as for the steel tanks that are being introduced from Australia - our engineering is a major step ahead - with base isolation earthquake protection, long life materials, options to make changes, maintain and adapt. With concrete you get one chance - it's poured and it's set in.

At the moment engineering is following a very safe route. Current thinking is to overbuild something, but at Timbertanks we're very aware that the more we overbuild the more weight we have to deal with. So we're very conscious about getting it just right. We want to be light but not over built, flexible - not under built.

For example - recently we won the contract from the Wellington City Council to relocate one of our old tanks from Tawa, to the wonderful new Zealandia wildlife native reserve in Karori and make it bigger in the process. So we did, as you can see from the photographs.

It is a more attractive piece of infrastructure to have alongside a popular walkway, and as one of a few base isolated water tanks in the Wellington region, it is ready to survive 'the Big One' when it comes.

You can buy cheap water storage tanks, but when the chips are down you can rely on a New Zealand made Timbertank. You can't do that with steel or concrete!