Environmentalists ‘block’ S.I. growth

Press, 9 August 1980, Page 6

Environmentalists ‘block’ S.I. growth

. Environmentalists are blocking the development of the best resources in the South Island, according to the president of the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association (Mr W. G. Beaven). “The glamour growth companies on the New Zealand stock market this year are the timber-related pulp and paper industries,” Mr Beaven said in his address to the 101st annual meeting of the association. I “We have missed out inj the South Island because groups of the environmentalists, not resident in the area, blocked on the West Coast a major pulp industry that could have meant so much to us right at this very time.”

Big companies have lost interest in trying to develop

forestry plans on the West Coast because people who had not even seen these beech tree valleys had signed petitions to defer forestry development, Mr Beaven said.

“This country was built on the natural resources of the country and the ingeniuty of the people, and that is basically what we still have today. We must utilise our best resources.” Mr Beaven cited the situation in Otago, which vitally needed a major industry to provide long term confidence and employment in Dunedin, where people, including a professor at Otago University, gave reasons why an aluminium smelter would not be to. their benefit.

“Right on our doorstep we have a new problem in

using liquified petroleum gas. “We do not have natural gas in the South Island so Government has indicated that L.P.G. will be a national price and as such could be an attractive natural resource that could be used in the South Island subject to approval of the installations at Lyttelton — and will that approval be forthcoming without endless committee decisions?

“We have a gas works that will be closing down and industry will have to substitute in many cases expensive oil and electricity when L.P.G. is the obvious answer.

“With the attractive price available by bulk installations, industry could become uneconomic and lose its competitive edge,” Mr Beaven said.