Buller coal will help port and coal co

Press, 22 February 1980, Page 1

Buller coal will help port and coal co

Trial shipments of Buller coal will be exported from Lyttelton “fairly soon,” the State Coal Mines manager (Mr J. F. Smith) said in Wellington yesterday. The shipments were being arranged while negotiations took place on the selling price for up to 250,000 tonnes of Buller coal annually. In another development, Mr Smith said the Government had guaranteed the Christchurch Gas Company up to 100,000 tonnes of Buller coal annually for the production of metallurgical coke. Details of this scheme are still sketchy but it is believed the coke would be made on the Buller coalfields and exported overseas where it could fetch up to $lOO a tonne. The general manager of the Christchurch Gas Company (Mr C. W. Kennedy) confirmed that the company was analysing the viability of using Buller coal for the production of metallurgical coke. He said that the company had sought 200,000 tonnes of coal a year and that it envisaged coke’s being produced for the domestic market, the projected silicon industry in the South Island, and for export. “We hope it will come about and the Government is behind the scheme, but we are still looking at it,” said Mr Kennedy. Mr Smith said the first Srial shipments of Buller coal would be on their way 'to several interested industrial concerns. Some six different countries, including a few outside the Pacific area, were interested in Buller coking coal.

Satisfactory progress had been made in negotiations with a number of overseas companies, ineluding steel-making firms, manufacturers of ’ foundry coke, and other j firms making coke for j special ferro alloys. i “We have brought back ! firm requests for trial i shipments from a number i of potential buyers, but j we were not satisfied with t the prices initially offered i and negotiations are continuing on this point,” Mr j Smith said. j Mr Smith also said that I companies in a number of j countries visited had > asked for samples of New j Zealand coking coals, 1 mainly from Buller, to be I supplied so that these | could be evaluated. These I would be evaluated and I sent overseas within the j next 10 days. , Before Mr Smith, ac- , companied by the Secre- I tary of Mines (Mr W. Partel) went on the selling i trip, the Minister of Energy (Mr Birch) had an- ; nounced that up to 1 250,000 tonnes of Buller ’ coal would be exported i annually. . | Initially this will be . railed to Lyttelton while; 1 investigations continue on • alternative transport sys- ; terns — barging from Westport to a deep-sea port, or the development ! of an off shore or deep* water port on the West I Coast. j Mr Smith confirmed | yesterday that the Govern-* ! ment was investigating the possibility of exports 'j of slurry coal (crushed ■ coal and water)., While ' .there was still some doubt about the success of this, trials were) continuing. .