A gate that swings inward needs the driveway to give it room, and plenty of entrances do not have it to give. Group One New Zealand designs, manufactures and installs driveway gates across Christchurch, with crews travelling out from a base on Foremans Road in Islington. Sydney Chappell founded the New Zealand company in 2026, and the same crews cover Canterbury from Amberley in the north down to Timaru in the south. Tell us the width of the opening, what has to fit through it, and which way the ground falls away from the street.
Measure between the posts you want, then work out what has to fit through: a car, a ute towing a trailer, a horse float, a campervan, or a contractor’s truck on a lifestyle block. The wider that opening span, the heavier each leaf becomes.
Where the driveway rises away from the road, the geometry gets fussy. A swing leaf climbing a slope has to be hung with ground clearance set at its highest point, which leaves a wider gap at the bottom of the swing. A slider on a level track often solves the same entrance more neatly. On short city frontages, and on shared vehicle crossings where two households use one entrance, the slider wins on space alone.
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Our range of materials covers wood, steel, aluminium and stainless steel. Timber looks right against an older house and takes the weather visibly, so it wants a frame that stays square and hardware that can be adjusted as the timber moves. Steel is the workhorse for a wide leaf because it carries the span without flexing, and it should be hot-dip galvanised before powder-coating so the protection is inside the sections as well as on them. Aluminium is light, which is kind to hinges and to a motor working several times a day. Stainless steel goes where fixings and fittings need to keep their finish.
Then there is the wind. The nor’wester crosses the plains warm, dry and gusty, and can send the city above 30°C on the way through. A solid-infill gate is a sail: the wider it is, the more load it hands to the posts and hinges, so post size, footing depth and the concrete around it are sized for the leaf they carry, not to a standard hole. Slatted or spaced infill lets the wind through instead. Frost is the other side of the year, with roughly 37 screen frosts and 90 ground frosts recorded annually, chiefly between April and October, which is why footings go deeper than people expect.
An automated gate is three decisions: the motor, the way you open it, and the safety gear that stops it closing on something.
If you already have a gate you like, you do not necessarily need a new one. We carry parts, hardware, access controllers and remote locks, so retrofitting a motor to a sound gate is a real option. What decides it is the gate’s weight, whether the frame is still true, and whether power can reach the post.
Christchurch City Council requires a building consent for any fence or hoarding over 2.5 metres, measured vertically from the top of the gate to the supporting ground directly below. Most driveway gates sit well under that.
The rule that catches people is a different one. In the Character Area Overlay, the Residential New Neighbourhood Zone and the medium and high density residential zones, lower and, or, visually transparent designs are required unless a resource consent is obtained. A driveway gate sits on the road boundary by definition, which is exactly where a district plan rule bites hardest, so a solid-infill design that is fine on one street may need a consent two suburbs over. Pool and spa barriers sit outside any of these exemptions and have their own rules.
If the gate runs into a shared boundary, your obligations to your neighbour come from the Fencing Act 1978. Confirm the current requirements with Christchurch City Council before work starts, and we will build to what they allow.
We work in three stages: design, manufacture and installation. Design starts at your entrance, with the opening measured, the fall noted, the swing or track run marked out, and the vehicles you actually use taken into account. Manufacture follows to those measurements, which is the difference between a gate made for your entrance and a fixed-size kitset you have to build the driveway around. Installation covers the posts, the footings, the hanging and the automation, with the gate tested before we leave. All our gates are 100% New Zealand made and installed, and they come with a comprehensive warranty and a full after-sales service.
Contact Group One today – reliable, accredited, and available 24/7.
Pricing is on quote, and in this city the zone your street sits in often settles part of the specification before the tape comes out. Where a lower or visually transparent design is required, the infill is chosen for you, and infill is what sets leaf area, which sets hinge and post specification, which sets motor size. That chain runs through the whole number.
Once the infill question is answered, the rest of it follows:
Islington is where the crews start the day, so a Christchurch entrance is a short run rather than a day out, and coming back to adjust something is not a production. Behind that is a small team that designs, manufactures and installs its own gates, which is also where the saving in choosing us comes from. Sydney Chappell founded the New Zealand company in 2026. In the company’s own words: “Although Group 1 Line Marking has just started here in New Zealand, as a group we have been operating in Australia for almost 25 years.” The full picture sits on our page.
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Before you settle on a solid infill, it is worth knowing which zone your street sits in, because in some of them the council wants a design you can see through. We will tell you what we are looking at when we measure.
Phone us on 027 424 0600 or email info@groupone.co.nz, 7am to 3pm Monday to Friday. Have the opening width, the vehicles that use it and a rough idea of the fall ready. Group One New Zealand, Unit 1, 37 Foremans Road, Islington, Christchurch 8042. NZBN 9429053752833.
Call 027 424 0600 to Request a Free QuoteThey are quoted per entrance. Span, leaf weight, material, finish, ground conditions and automation all move the figure, which is why the measure-up comes before the number.
Neither is better in the abstract. Steel and aluminium hold a wide span with less movement and less maintenance; timber suits some houses far better, if the frame and the hardware are right for it.
An off-the-shelf gate is priced for a standard opening. If your span, your fall or your vehicles are not standard, the cost turns up later in packing, kerbing or a motor working harder than it should.
Yes. Crews travel from Islington across Canterbury, north to Amberley and south to Timaru, and west towards the foothills.