Dunedin ‘missed out’ on price rise

Press, 2 March 1984, Page 4

Dunedin ‘missed out’ on price rise

Dunedin had “missed out” on a lucrative rise in the price of aluminium because of opposition to a smelter’s being built at Aramoana, said the member of Parliament for Dunedin Central, Mr B. P. MacDonell, yesterday. He told the executive of the South Island Promotion Association, meeting in Christchurch, that the price of aluminium had risen 400 per cent in the last year. Comalco, which runs a smelter at Bluff, was expected to make a sAustllo million profit this year, compared with sAust27 million last year, because of the price rise. ' Mr MacDonell said that he was concerned about the attitude of some Otago people towards the proposed

smelter. He had “nailed his colours to the mast” in support of the smelter. That was probably one reason why he had been dropped by the Labour Party as the candidate for Dunedin Central. Environmentalists had told people in Dunedin that the price of aluminium would drop and that a smelter would not be viable. “There has been a fourfold increase in the price in just one year. We could have been a part of that,” he said. Mr MacDonell said that with proper safeguards the smelter would not have damaged the environment. If it had proceeded as planned, the smelter would have already starteqlproduction.