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Bernard Bellamy at his Pahiatua coffin factory Windsor Industries, with a coffin which measures 1050mm wide - Source: Fairfax
Crematoriums are being forced to build bigger furnaces as more Kiwi bodies - and their coffins - become larger.
The Hawke's Bay crematorium, which is only 12 years old, is already due for replacement, partly because it can take coffins that are only up to 820mm wide, which the local cemetery manager says is too narrow "by today's standards".
This, combined with the cremator's failing parts, has prompted the manager to seek a new one, probably from the United States and costing about $250,000, to take bigger coffins.
Funeral Directors' Association president Tony Garing said: "It's a fact that caskets are getting bigger to accommodate bigger citizens.
"It's a factor of a lot of crematoria, especially older units, that when you get a casket of extreme width, which are becoming more commonly used, that they are too narrow. That is not uncommon. It's amazing how things have changed."
The size of a standard casket had increased four times over the past 20 years and was now 570mm wide across the shoulder, he said.
"Coffins can be made to fit anybody. I'm aware of a funeral director in one North Island town who once or twice a year has a need for a coffin the size of a single bed."
Most modern crematoriums could take the larger coffins, he said, but some oversized caskets were suitable only for burial.
Gavin Murphy, manager of Hutt Valley funeral directors Gee & Hickton, is also looking to buy a new and larger one. He runs the largest cremator in Wellington, capable of taking 820mm-wide coffins.
"We hope to have a one-metre-wide one in place by the end of the year.
"It's no secret that people are getting bigger. People always look comfortable in a casket if there's space along the sides for mementoes, etc.
"People tend to prefer larger caskets."
Casket manufacturer Bernard Bellamy, of Windsor Industries in Pahiatua, said there was no question caskets were getting bigger to accommodate larger people.
"We've got staff who have been making caskets for decades. Going back a few years the standard casket size across the shoulders was 19 inches. Now it's 22-23, which ends up at 660mm or 670mm wide on the outside. We've gone up an inch in the last five years."
The biggest casket Windsor makes is more than a metre wide. "Sometimes we just make a rectangle box as close as possible to the required size," Bellamy said.
"Anything that size will not fit in a cremator. They're just for burial."
Larger and obese people are also creating extra pressure on emergency services. St John Ambulance is looking to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on specialist gear to transport obese people.
Bigger bodies
A report by the Health Ministry in September last year showed there had been a huge rise in obesity in New Zealand adults over recent decades.
In 1977, 9% of males were obese.
In 2008-09 the figure was 27%. Female obesity has increased from 11% to 27.8% over the same period. (Obesity is defined as excess weight for height to the extent that health may be affected.)
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