Tiwai Pt officially opens today

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 1

Tiwai Pt officially opens today

When the Prime Minister (Sir Keith Holyoake) opens the New Zealand Aluminium Smelters, Ltd, works at Tiwai Point, opposite Bluff, today, New Zealand will officially have a major metallurgical industry and the world’s most modern aluminium smelter.

The opening, however, will be only the formal “official” one, because the first aluminium produced there was in April 23 of this year. Since then about 7000 tons has been manufactured, of which about 1000 tons has been exported. Although the world outlook for aluminium is not good at present, the new industry has been calculated by independent economists from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research as being economically advantageous to New Zealand.

As a preliminary to the official opening, Comalco-flew a large party of Australian and New Zealand journalists to Invercargill last week to see the smelter at work and

meet some of the men and women who are producing the aluminium from the imported raw material. A press conference had questions answered by the Wellington office manager of Comalco, the largest partner in the enterprise (Mr G. Lit-, tiewood) and the general manager of operations (Mr J. L. Merrett).

Executive diplomacy

With the skill of executives in such television films as the “Power Game” and the “Trouble-shooters,” they parried questions about price and - the destination of the aluminium already shipped. “We are only a toll smelter,” was their reply. “We do not do the selling.” Price was something they could not discuss. Had any of the small quantity of aluminium so far shipped gone to the competing firm of Alcan, which is permitted to import 50 per cent of its requirements until 1976 by agreement with the Government, an Australian financial writer asked.

“Aluminium has gone to our customers,” was the bland reply. Knowing what he did of the “incestuous” nature of the aluminium industry, he would make his own guess, the writer said; and that was what he was left to do.

Manapouri question

Questions about the use of alternative power if Lake Manapouri was not raised were answered by flat statements that Comalco’s agreement with the Government was for Manapouri power, and that it was not interested in alternative sources. On the lake capacity, the executives said it was not a question of extra capacity, but a guarantee of continuity.

To illustrate this Mr Merrett gave recent figures of power usage. The smelter had used 138.2 megawatts and had a 98.46 per cent load factor. This could be compared with a domestic load factor of about 50 per cent. In any discussion of the agreement, they reiterated that Comalco was a party to an agreement with the Government and was in every way honouring its agreement. It was not involved in any other discussions on Manapouri.

Nor were they prepared to discuss what would happen at the smelter if the partneis ih the enterprise—two Japanese companies and Comalco —did not need all the aluminum produced. The agreement was for the smelter to

be producing 73,000 tons of aluminium a year from the first completed potline, and the target was for IIOjOOO tons by the middle of next year. This was still the target. When it came to describing the development and the working of the plant, the Comalco experts were enthusiastic. . sBom for stage one The history of the new industry goes back many years, with New Zealand interested in attracting a major overseas company to boost the economy by offering it a supply of electricity which is a vital factor in aluminium production.

To build the huge factory —some idea of the cost is given by the sBom estimated for the first stage of the smelter—two big Japanese companies, Showa Denko K.K., a chemical company which has produced aluminium in Japan since 1934, and is a major figure in electro-chemistry and petrochemicals, and the Sumitomo Chemical Company, which has been in the aluminium industry since 1936, joined Comalco. The Australian company came into the aluminium field in 1955, when bauxite, the ore of aluminium, was discovered in Weipa, Queensland. It has developed the resources and sent bauxite and the resultant alumina to world markets, and has sponsored a consortium to build a new alumina refinery in Sardinia which will be supplied with bauxite from Weipa next year. In 1961, . Comalco bought the Commonwealth Government’s share of the smelter at Bell Bay, Tasmania, and expanded it. It has also started semi-fabricating, with extrusion' presses in the larger Australian cities. . The attraction to New Zealand was power, just as it was in Tasmania, which is wealthy in hydro-electric power but imports minerals for processing from the Australian mainland. Construction of the Bluff smelter began in July, 1969 —a massive undertaking. The 215-acre site at Tiwai Point had to be cleared and levelled, several miles of road had to formed and a 650 ft wharf built out in deep water, reached by a 4170 ft approach which carries the conveyor taking the powdery alumina into storage from the bulkunloading equipment. Cameras forbidden The aluminium reduction process has been well described, and basically it does not change from smelter to smelter; but there are probably still some industrial secrets at Bluff, which because it is the latest is the most modem smelter. Cameras are forbidden, the Official reason being that the magnetic fields inside the

plant can damage shutters—and certainly visitors have to leave their watches off when they are shown through the potrooms—but there is a possibility ' that it is a move against industrial espionage, said to be a thriving business overseas.

A representative of “The Press” who went to Bluff last week was shown over the Bell Bay works a few years ago. The most impressive difference to the layman is the great progress in mechanisation. Manual work done at Bell Bay is done at Bluff by machines, some of which a few years ago would have been regarded as in the realm of science fiction. Some statistics Facts and figures in big industry are always impressive. Some of the New Zealand smelter’s are:

The peak work-force during construction was 1300. The two potrooms making up the first potline are the longest of any smelter in the world. Each of the 1970 ft-long buildings houses 102 reduction cells or furnaces. More than 750,000 cubic yards of earth was moved to prepare the site.

Among the materials used were 90 miles of electrical cable, more than 500,000 square feet of plant buildings, 85,000 cubic yards of concrete and more than 1.25 m square feet of aluminium roofing and siding ma-

terial. The vacuum unloader on the

wharf can - handle 300 tons ...of alumina in an. hour. When the plant is producing its 73,000 tons a year, there will be 650 on the staff. 1 The smelter’s stack, which disperses cleansed gases, is the second tallest in the country, at 450 ft.

It takes two tons of alumina, half a ton of carbon (anode material, a mixture of pitch and petroleum coke), 0.1 tons of cryolite and miscellaneous raw materials to manufacture one ton of aluminium. Another new feature is that the industrial agreement, which covers all employees who are on wages, is the first to be negotiated for a large and permanently operating industry. Working round the clock, 365 days of the year, the staff—at present about 500— are mostly New Zealanders, nearly all recruited in Southland. Bell Bay was the training ground for some foremen and supervisors in a field new for New Zealand, and they have taken readily to new skills.

While the participating companies can be expected to be the major destination for New Zealand’s aluminium, the companies look to a growing use in New Zealand of aluminium —and they are supported by economists’ forecasts.

New Zealand at present has an aluminium consumption of 141 b a head, against Australia, 251 b, and the United States, 471 b.

(Protest rally. Page 16.)