Rings' Carpet Ready to Roll
Staff Reporter

The longest red carpet ever needed in New Zealand has been obtained.

Organisers of the Australasian premiere on December 19 of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring wanted to find hundreds of metres of red carpet to roll down Wellington's Courtenay Place to the Embassy Theatre for stars and special guests to walk on.

When New Zealand industrial carpet company Autex Industries read about the scheme in The Evening Post, it approached Wellington City Council to offer its services.

The council then gave Autex the green light to make 200m of bright red carpet.

Autex's Wellington carpet sales representative, Paul Mussen, said yesterday the firm had made five 40m rolls of carpet in five days in its Auckland factory. This was despite other companies earlier saying it could take up to 12 weeks to make a carpet of that size.

Mr Mussen said the carpet wasn't made from good old Kiwi wool but hard-wearing polypropylene. "It looks just like woollen carpet, though."

He wouldn't say what Autex had charged to make the carpet, except that "the council got a hot deal out of it".

The red carpet is still in Auckland but is expected to be brought to Wellington shortly.