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The Waimate District Council has agreed to join the Local Government Funding Agency as it seeks to reduce financing costs in borrowing $15m in external debt.
Nelson Airport Ltd is on the up with strong levels of leisure travel and increasing business travel.
Nelson Airport has flown back into the black with a before-tax profit of $629,000 for the six months to December 31, up from a loss of $601,000 for the previous six months. Interim chief executive Andy Wotton agreed the result was heartening given that international travel normally accounted for about 15 per cent of business, and it had been decimated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Wotton gave credit to “smart scheduling” by carriers New Zealand, Sounds Air and Originair in rebuilding demand. “We saw strong activity levels for leisure travel and increasing business travel,” he said. “For the last quarter, activity consistently sat around 80 per cent of last year s levels. We are looking forward to further improvement as the Covid-19 vaccination roll-out programme has an impact and hopefully enables the possibility of a trans-Pacific travel bubble in the medium term.”