raptor's experience @ Tiptop
Tiptop scouting mission.
TIPTOP , OPENED 1968, CLOSED 2007 .
I was messing around on google looking for potential sites last week when I stumbled across an article dated April 2007 saying that the Tiptop factory on Blenheim road was closing. A little more digging (namely, the Tiptop website) informed me that it had closed in 2007, and its business had been moved to Perth and Auckland. The next night after work, Hawkeye and I cruised down Blenheim road to see if we could find it. Not knowing the exact address, we just cruised up and down looking for a likely location, and discovered a building with a temporary chainlink fence and a big demolition sign. Assuming it was the building we were looking for, we pulled into the carpark and had a quick look out the car window, but with a police car pulled over on the side of the road to our right, and a security company car parked up in a carpark on the opposite side of the road, we decided discretion was a better idea and decided to come back later. Cut one week to tonight. We decided to do a driveby to see how far they had progressed with the demolition. I had my camera with me, and decided to take it along, intending just to do a slow walk by looking for potential entry routes, so we parked on a nearby street and walked back. We walked along the front, noting an easy access point, but decided to scope out the entire front, then cruise back and have a quick look. Just behind us, a car suddenly pulled in and turned off its lights, we jumped into some convenient shadows and watched, wondering what was going on. Two guys jumped out, snuck through a little hole in the fence and grabbed some big white bags (sacks?) and started throwing them into the back of their wagon. They looked like they were in a hurry, and took off really quickly, leaving us very curious. We jetted back to where they were, saw nothing, went through the fence and had a quick look around. The ground was covered in glass, and there were huge holes in the side of the building, in the interior ceiling, and it was very obviously in the process of being torn down. I took a few photos, and we heard some weird noises, then Hawkeye thought he saw a flashlight moving around above us, so we decided to take off.
We got back to the car, and i recalled from my research on google maps that there may have been a rear exit, so I took a couple side streets and eventually after a fence jump we landed in the rear of the compound. There was a reasonably large area with lots of loading doors in various buildings; it looked as though when the factory was operational, that this was where the trucks would have come to load and drop off. There were a few random bits of what I assume was once ice-cream making machinery and some gas tanks lying around. We made our way around the buildings on the sides of the compound, they seemed to be mainly offices, but there was one building that with its plastic curtain things looked suspiciously like a room where meat was chopped up. We scouted out the main building but didn’t go in more than a few steps – we weren’t prepared, only had a shitty 3-LED torch and there was a lot of debris lying around from the demolition job (which is ongoing and extensive), so it seemed smarter to come back with either a bigger torch or during daylight.
We’d been moving around the area with my camera flashing for about half an hour, and there were houses overlooking, we were moving slowly from the back towards the front, when we heard sirens on Blenheim road. We decided that we’d outstayed our welcome, and started jogging slowly back across the rear wasteland. Suddenly the factory next door (which strangely is highly active at 10pm) turned on a bunch of exterior lights, and the fence bordering it and Tiptop parted (literally) up and a (bigrig) truck with highbeams on came roaring through towards us. I have no idea why, the rear wasteland is sealed off with fences and there is no main road access, but regardless, this sealed the deal, so we sprinted like lunatics and bailed over the fence, bolted to the car and took off.
This was essentially a scouting mission, it’s a big place and we didn’t get far inside the main building(s?), but it’s in pretty rough shape so I’d probably recommend being very careful exploring, especially the upstairs portions. We’re gonna go back and conquer the whole compound at some point, but we (and any others interested) will have to do so very soon, the damage done in the week since our first driveby is extensive, and there is heavy machinery parked outside. Presumably it will be coming down very soon.
Random Photo
Uploaded by urban_ninja
I am assuming that this was Tiptop, I’ve never actually seen the place before so it could just be some random deserted place, so feel free to correct me. Either way, it’s a pretty interesting, and soon to be gone location.
its definitely tiptop :)
good shit man, nice writeup and photos!
Yeah, good write up! I wonder how much the guys that took off with the white sacks got for their efforts? ;)
Man I’ve been thinking about what they could have been doing; there were no obvious things worth stealing lying around and even if there was, they didn’t stick around long enough to actually fill empty sacks with anything, so all I can guess is that someone else dropped some stuff off, hid it just inside the compound and they came along and picked it up. It was pretty fucking weird, but there are some odd motherfuckers out there so who knows.
probably metal-thieves
nah man, they were slinging them around like they weighed nothing. my initial thought was big sacks of weed, but who’d leave huge sacks of weed lying around an abandoned factory…
Is that bulldozer type thing still up on the 2nd floor? that confused me, as to how the fuck they got it up there, and why lol. We got some photos of this place too, from last weekend. We’re just waiting on our slack cunt mate to upload them lol.
I don’t know, we didn’t go up there. Our torch was too shitty and we didn’t wanna risk going up there with all the debris, glass and gaping holes.