Government funds Tiwai Point study after being left blind on its condition
4 Feb, 2021 04:00 PM
6 minutes to read
Environment Southland has been given $300,000 by the Government to assess the site of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, possibly duplicating work by owners Rio Tinto. Photo / Supplied Cabinet has agreed to give Environment Southland $300,000 for a study of the condition of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, amid signs that the Government has doubts about what its owners, Rio Tinto, will do when it closes.
In January Rio Tinto, which owns about 80 per cent of the smelter, announced a deal with its electricity provider Meridian Energy which would extend the life of the smelter until at least the end of 2024.
Kavinda Herath / Stuff
Sort out the Dross spokesperson and Mataura resident Laurel Turnbull is delighted to hear an agreement has been reached to remove the ouvea premix being stored in the town s former paper mill building.
Tonnes of a hazardous substance sitting in a Mataura warehouse will be moved to the New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Limited (NZAS) site at Tiwai Point where it will be stored in containers. The news has been welcomed by Mataura resident Laurel Turnbull, who has been fighting for the removal of the ouvea premix since 2014.
Kavinda Herath/Stuff
Sort out the Dross spokesperson and Mataura resident Laurel Turnbull is delighted to hear an agreement has been reached to remove the ouvea premix being stored in the town s former paper mill building.
To dial back to the beginning, when Rio Tinto first announced it was reviewing the smelter’s future in October 2019, it had two demands. First, it wanted to cut the price it paid to Meridian and Contact for electricity by about a third. It is believed to be paying about 5 cents a kilowatt hour for power. Second, it wanted to roughly halve the annual bill it was paying to Transpower to carry that electricity to the smelter, from about $60m a year to $28m a year. Meridian and Contact put together a sharper deal, which the smelter effectively rejected when it announced in July that it planned to close the smelter by August this year.