Nickel plant for Nelson?

Press, 21 July 1982, Page 1

Nickel plant for Nelson?

PA Nelson A site near Nelson will be studied for the possible construction of a nickel smelter costing more . than $lOO million.

A feasibility study will be prepared for a North Shore company, New Zealand Nickel Smelters, Ltd, after communication between the company and the Nelson Harbour Board.

If it- goes ahead the smelter will not be based at Port Nelson but will have its own berthing facilities at a site nearby. It is believed that sites, will be examined in the feasibility study, which may begin as early as next week.

New Zealand Nickel Smelters’ managing director, Mr Ernest Smith, said from

Auckland that the proposed smelter would have an annual wage bill of $4.5 million and a 40.000-tonne yearly export production. He said that the Nelson Harbour Board was one of “several” groups he has communicated with about smelter sites. The board discussed the smelter in committee at its recent monthly meeting. Mr Smith, who faced a storm of protest from envi.ronmentalists when he made a similar proposal in 1980, said that he had “failed to point some things out” at that time.

“We would not be building in the middle of town or mudflats, or need Harbour Board facilities. We would provide our own facilities, or in conjunction with a local

authority,” he said. The smelter would not prove a dust nuisance as the ore would arrive damp from New Caledonia. Mr Smith yesterday emphasised that firm plans were some way off. He said that the cost of the smelter would be about the 1980 budgeted figure of $lOO million, with inflation added. The smelter would employ about 300 people. The company, which was formed in 1974, had been working on the smelter proposal for almost 10 years. “This project never died. Every time we have examined it, it has turned out to be viable,” said Mr Smith. In 1980 New Zealand Nickel Smelters was working

on the project with overseas partners but there was no foreign involvement at the moment.

The project would provide an export product with more than 60 per cent New Zealand added value. This compared with a New Zealand added value of about 50 per cent in metal from an aluminium smelter, according to the "New Zealand Herald.”

The production would be in the form of ferro-nickel, which is used in producing stainless steel — about 40,000 tonnes of the steel contains more than 10,000 tonnes of nickel.

A nickel smelter would use less than 300 gigawatt hours of electricity a year, about one-tenth of that proposed in an aluminium smelter.