Trial shipments of Buller coal soon

Press, 17 April 1980, Page 2

Trial shipments of Buller coal soon

Westport reporter

Trial shipments of Buller coal would be exported to Japan “fairly soon,” said the Secretary of Mines (Mr W. S. Partel) yesterday. Mr Partel has been in Westport on a three-day visit and left to return to Wellington yesterday afternoon.

Mr Partel denied reports that a sales mission to Asia two months ago had failed and that the Government was embarrassed. He said there were good prospects for Buller coal exports this year. Probably 100,000 tonnes or more would be shipped this year, mostly to Japan. Mr Partel was commenting on recent press reports that Dutch buyers might help the Government out of an embarrassing position with Buller coal. The reports said that members of the party with the Dutch Foreign Minister last week talked with officials of the Mines Depart* ment about a possible deal involving large quantities of Buller coal. Mr Partel said mines officials did have talks with

Dutch interests last week but deals “involving large quantities of Buller coal” were not discussed.

The purpose of his threeday trip to Buller was to look over the Ngakawau coal handling complex and also to look at possible offshore loading facilities at Ngakawau. Mr Partel emphasised that this prospect was still in the “very early stages” and no estimates of costs had yet been done. Although work on the Waimangaroa coal-handling facilities had been deferred, pending long-term sales for Denniston coal’s being settled, work is proceeding in a big way on the Ngakawau coal project. Work is expected to start this week on the second stage of the Ngakawau project with a major contract for construction of a 2000tonne coal storage bin and associated mechanical and electrical equipment. This contract was let recently to Angus Construction, Ltd. The contract is worth $1.14 million. Work is due to be finished on the job in November next year. Thu firm winning the contract is already on the site

as it has been building the first-stage of the project, a receiving bin structure worth about $360,000.

The Waimangaroa coalhandling facilities have been deferred while either a longterm purchaser who does not mind the sulphur content of the Denniston coal has been found or a method of reducing the sulphur content can be produced from experiments on a sample sent to Australia. Therefore, work on the Waimangaroa project does not appear on the 1980-81 Ministry of Works and Development programme. The stockpile facilities, weighbridge, vehicle garage, and amenity building for the Waimangaroa project were completed before the project was shelved. These are worth about $200,000. 1 The Ministry’s resident engineer at Westport (Mr E. Hansen) believes this work would have been necessary in any event, for instance in view of requirements to supply the Tarakohe cement works.

The parts of the prbject deferred are a processing plant and storage bins estimated to cost about $1 million.