Joint ventures possible

Press, 25 August 1983, Page 12

Joint ventures possible

PA Wellington The possibility of joint ventures involving South Korea, New Zealand, and Third World countries was discussed at the meeting in Wellington of the New Zea-land-Korea Business Council. In a communique after the talks, the New Zealand co-chairman of the meeting, Mr John Ede, said that Korean interests had “promoted quite heavily” the possibility. Mr Ede said New Zealand delegates gave some support to New Zealand’s providing raw material, the Koreans providing perhaps technology and certainly finance, and using labour from Third World countries.

This would be particularly applicable to the construction industry, he said. The communique noted that the Korean businessmen showed interest in diversifying their exports into areas such as petrochemicals.

Other items which they wanted to export were textiles, rolling stock, ships, steel products, electrical transmission and distribution facilities, and automobiles.

The electoral equipment reflects the Korean interest in tendering for the $2OO million Wellington-Auckland rail electrification project.

The Korean co-chairman of the meeting, Dr Kim Kak-Choong, said that the republic’s decreasing participation in New Zealand’s deep-water fishing was of “very serious” concern. New Zealand delegates said that new allocation systems would encourage further developments in deepwater fisheries “which could lead to opportunities for involvement by some Korean companies in providing catching capacity for the New Zealand allocationholder?