The major refit by NHNZ of the former Roslyn Woollen Mills building in Dunedin, more recently occupied by the Metropolitan Club, is more than creating a made-for-purpose home for the film production company.
It is also a metaphor for how the award-winning Dunedin-based television documentary production company has emerged stronger, larger and more influential after several tough years.
If not the largest, most respected film company of its type in the world, NHNZ is in the top few, with shrewd stakes in, or alliances with, similar companies in Singapore, South Africa and eventually Australia, and production houses in China and Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.
Go back three years and the exporter was being hammered by a soaring exchange rate, which in one month alone eroded $US250,000 from its bottom line.
Ten jobs were affected, involving three early retirements, three job losses and four who moved to contracted positions.
But that is history.
The Fox Television Studios-owned company has gone from strength to strength and, through its various entities, will this year produce close to 120 hours of film.
Ask managing director Michael Stedman the reasons for this transformation, and he puts it down to two things.
The first was the conscious decision in 2007 to either stand still and face an almost inevitable contraction of business, or go out and grow.
They chose the latter.
The second was to turn to its strength, the quality and talent of its staff, built from 30 years' experience.
This has not only resulted in some changes in production, but also what is produced.
Technology played a key role.
NHNZ has been using high definition (HD) technology for close to 10 years and will soon start moving in to 3-D, utilising the technology expertise of its staff, but also working with leading developers of the technology in Dunedin.
Look at the list of documentaries under production and you also get a sense of another change.
The list includes topics normally associated with NHNZ - dinosaurs and whales - but also early human hunters, an investigation on the massive Meydan Racecourse in Dubai and the Pearl River Tower in China's Guangzhou City.
The expansion policy was not rushed, but carefully considered, and means NHNZ controls or has alliances throughout the southern hemisphere, with the exception of South America - something Mr Stedman said he hoped to soon change.
"As you grow, you almost become a one-stop shop."
It was important to him that companies bought by NHNZ retained their own identity.
"We don't want to turn them into branch offices.
"Our goal is to grow and strengthen them and that has significant benefits to NHNZ."
Film output from Singapore-based Beach House Pictures, bought two years ago, has doubled in the plast two years and Aquavision TV Productions in South Africa will also increase output next year.
Mr Stedman said NHNZ's other strength was to be unassuming; to "stay under the radar".
When doing sales pitches, NHNZ does not enter a lengthy spiel about how good it is, but rather lets the quality of itswork do the talking.
The reality was that now it had such a profile, television companies were commissioning it and it had access to the who's who of the television world, including National Geographic, Animal Channel, Discovery Channel and the Arts and Entertainment Channel.
That laid-back Otago approach and the quality of its work has given NHNZ preferential access to China, where it is the largest western-based producer of documentaries in that country.
Trust, the quality of its work and a relationship built over 10 years, means that after the Sichuan earthquake, NHNZ was given access to make a documentary.
"We are increasingly being given access to areas of China that are not available to other western companies."
The recent purchase of a controlling stake in South Africa's largest production company, Aquavision, will give it access to the African continent and also to its contacts around the world.
It employs about 50 people and will next year produce 30 to 35 hours of film footage.
Equally, the decision to establish a production office in the Middle East gives it access to that part of the world, where it will focus on building the group's 3-D production and output.
Mr Stedman said from a film producer's point of view, the Middle East had been ignored for a long time and there were stories there to be told.
"No matter what genre or geography, this group can meet what the customer wants, whether it's lions in Africa, whales in the Antarctic or tribes in the Pacific.
"It's about genres and its about geography."
Diversity also reduced risk to the company.
"Any company we have taken a stake in, we turn a potential competitor into part of the family."
Mr Stedman saw potential for growth, not only for NHNZ, but also Dunedin's other media production companies which he said had talented people and used leading-edge technology.
In 10 years the value of exports from this cluster had grown from between $7 million and $10 million a year, to $40 million, of which NHNZ generated about $30 million.
That comprised export dollars built off high-tech, niche industries producing quality products, a route he said many city companies were pursuing, whether engineering, education or the primary industry.
NHNZ employs up to 120 people in the city and another 80 overseas, but Mr Stedman said its performance was despite the Dunedin City Council, which appeared to have little interest in what NHNZ was doing or how it could remove obstacles.
High-tech media had potential to contribute significantly more to the city, he said.
There was a nucleus of talented people already here working in established companies such as NHNZ and Animation Research Ltd, as well as emerging companies.
They had international reputations for producing products of the highest quality, the University of Otago turned out skilled graduates and Mr Stedman said the city had a pleasant lifestyle.
He said the council needed to embrace the sector and help it to grow and it could start by showing an interest.
NHNZ will start to move to its new premises in June, a process that will take several months as it continues with film production.
