The Southern Heritage Trust is urgently seeking funds to dismantle the equipment that previously operated in a historic rope walk building in South Dunedin.
Southern Heritage Trust founder Ann Barsby said about $15,000 could be required to undertake the complex dismantling and storage work, which will start early next week.
Donaghys Industries Ltd management this week joined forces with the trust to stage a rare demonstration of the traditional rope-making gear, including a mechanised ''traveller'' that weighs several tonnes.
Senior trust members, Heritage New Zealand Otago-Southland area manager Jonathan Howard, Donaghys site manager Mark Bowie and potential funders saw the equipment in action at the company's complex.
The 320m-long rope walk building, originally used for manufacturing long, heavy ropes for use on sailing ships in the 19th century, has a category one heritage listing as a nationally significant building.
But it is no longer needed for industrial production, and the company is rationalising and modernising its plant this summer.
The trust plans to preserve the building as a ''living'' museum, with working rope-making equipment, but the immediate priority is dismantling the gear and storing it safely.
This is partly because some of the operating equipment is housed in another part of the Donaghys plant, where the space is needed for more modern manufacturing operations.
Mrs Barsby said the trust would make $3000 available, but more support was needed from the community and community organisations to fund the dismantling, which was the ''critical'' first stage of the planned heritage redevelopment.
She predicted the rope walk building would become a key heritage tourism asset for the city, part of a heritage tourism circuit including the Dunedin Gasworks Museum, also in South Dunedin.
The trust recently took over the responsibility ''to safeguard and restore'' the Donaghys rope walk plant's land, buildings and equipment, in Bradshaw St.
Mr Bowie praised the ''tenacious'' approach taken by Mrs Barsby and said the rope-making gear was part of the history of Donaghys, as well as an important part of Dunedin's industrial heritage.
The Dunedin rope walk building is believed to be the only one remaining in New Zealand.
