​This is our first newsletter of the year, following the weekly series we ran in the final quarter of last year. In December we asked for feedback on what you’d like to see in these updates, and we’ve taken that feedback on board. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts.

One change this year is that the newsletter will now be fortnightly rather than weekly, and will generally be sent on Fridays. If reading that caused a moment of panic, don’t worry — it’s only Thursday today! We do have something happening tomorrow that’s quite significant, which is why this newsletter is going out a day early. We’ll tell you more about that in a couple of weeks.

​As mentioned late last year, we’ve now opened an office in Auckland, located at the southern end of Ellerslie at 666 Great South Road. We’ve also welcomed Anastasia Nicklin as our Business Development Manager, responsible for the Northern Region and several of our key accounts.

If you’re based in Auckland, Hamilton, or the wider Northern Region and haven’t yet met Anastasia, please feel free to reach out. She’d be more than happy to meet for a coffee, discuss anything fire monitoring related, talk about how we can support you, and demonstrate some of our recent developments — including the AFAM Property Portfolio Portal.

​We’ve recently received the first prototype of our newly redesigned CTU, and we’re extremely pleased with how it’s shaping up.

While it’s still an early prototype and further development is required, it already includes a number of new features. As outlined in last year’s newsletters, these improvements will open up the ability to offer additional services and help fire alarm technicians do their best work.

We’ll keep you updated as the project progresses.

We received some great feedback on the installation videos we produced last year, so we’ve decided to expand on that with a short series of interview-style videos covering a range of topics.

The first few will be aimed at property owners and managers, explaining what fire alarm monitoring is and where it fits within building compliance. We’ll then produce additional videos for fire alarm service agents.

If there are topics you’d like us to cover, let us know — we’d be happy to consider them for the series.

After a couple of quieter weeks in January, things quickly ramped up. The phones started ringing and the workload increased dramatically — and it hasn’t slowed since. From the conversations we’re having, it seems many others in the industry are seeing the same trend.

With the amount of change happening across the industry at the moment, it looks like 2026 is going to be both busy and interesting.

On that note, if you have customers who may benefit from transitioning their monitoring from JCA or Alarm NZ to us, please let us know. All we need is the customer’s contact details and we’ll handle the rest. From the customer’s perspective, the transition won’t cost them anything in terms of time or money, in fact in most cases they’ll save money.

If you’re unsure how switching monitoring providers works or what’s involved, just get in touch and we’ll be happy to explain.

​In our next newsletter we’ll take a closer look at the improvements we’ve made across our products and services since last year’s newsletter series. There have been a lot of developments — all designed to benefit both building owners and service agents.

We celebrated our 20th anniversary and shared an update on our newly appointed, Auckland-based Business Development Manager. If you missed it, you can catch up here AFAM 20th Birthday.

This edition wraps up our 2025 newsletter series. Don’t worry—we’ll be back with regular updates after the summer break. Before we sign off, we have a few updates to share and a couple of questions for you.

We’re open for business as usual until close of business on 24 December.

Our office will remain open throughout the holiday period, with a skeleton team in place from 24 December to 5 January.

As always, we have staff on call 24/7 for urgent matters. If your question is about fire alarm monitoring, we’ve got you covered. If it’s about how long to defrost a turkey, we may not be the right people to ask.

The fit-out of our Auckland office will take place during the week commencing 12 January.

Our new Business Development Manager will spend some time in Christchurch before being permanently based in Auckland from 26 January.

On behalf of everyone at AFAM, thank you for your support throughout the year. We hope you’re able to take a well-earned break and enjoy some quality time with friends and family over the holiday period.

We’ve enjoyed bringing these newsletters to you and hope you’ve found them valuable. We have plenty planned for 2026 and will continue to use these updates to keep you informed.

We’d love your feedback:

• Is there anything specific you’d like to see included?
• Are the newsletters too long, too short, or just right?

We’re also considering moving to a fortnightly schedule in 2026 instead of weekly. Let us know what you think.

We took a closer look at some of the features and benefits we’re building into our next-generation CTU. If you missed it, you can catch up here Next Generation CTU.

This week’s update is a little shorter than usual. Like us, you’re probably flat out as everyone works to wrap things up before the Summer Break, so we’ll keep things brief.

Today, 12 December 2025, marks AFAM’s 20th birthday. A quick look at the Companies Office will show that AFAM was officially incorporated on 12 December 2005—so happy birthday to us!

A lot has changed since those early days. We’ve grown to become New Zealand’s fastest growing Fire Alarm Monitoring company. Today we operate the length and breadth of New Zealand and provide Fire Alarm Monitoring services to some of the largest companies and organisations here and protect some of the countries most valuable buildings. 

What hasn’t changed is how we treat our customers. Whether you’re a multinational with a large portfolio or a single-building owner, you receive the same level of care, respect, and service.

Our commitment to innovation hasn’t changed either. If you’ve been following this series, you’ll know we’re always working to improve what we do and to introduce new services and products—often at no extra cost to our customers.

Happy 20th Birthday, AFAM. We’re excited for what the next decade will bring.

A few weeks ago, we announced our plan to establish an Auckland office and appoint a Business Development Manager to support the Northern Region.

The response to the BDM role was outstanding. We met some excellent candidates and are pleased to say we’ve appointed someone who we believe will be a fantastic addition to our team and a strong advocate for customers in the region. We can’t share their name just yet, but we’ll introduce them early next year.

We’ve also secured premises in Penrose, where we’ll hold a small number of monitoring units and spares. We expect the office to be fully operational in early February.

​We’ll be wrapping up this weekly series, which we launched in September to run through until Christmas. Next week, we’ll tie up a few loose ends and share our plans for the year ahead.