Cement plant closure would lead to increased costs for Tiwai Pt smelter

The closure of Holcim's Westport cement plant will lead to increased costs for the cash-strapped Tiwai Pt aluminium smelter, its acting general manager says.

This week, Holcim announced it would close its Westport cement plant in about two years and will instead import cement to New Zealand.

In 2010, the smelter struck a deal with Holcim to process some of the smelter's waste product known as spent-cell lining at its Westport plant.

Spent-cell lining is a byproduct removed from aluminium reduction cells that can be used an alternative fuel, replacing coal, for the cement, brick and industrial ceramics industries.

Since the deal, the smelter has sent hundreds of tonnes of the byproduct to be processed at the plant but it may need to be exported when the cement plant closes.

New Zealand Aluminium Smelters (NZAS) acting general manager Scott Westbury said the closure of the cement plant would lead to increased costs for the Tiwai Pt smelter.

This year about 230 tonnes from the Tiwai smelter had so far been processed domestically.

Westbury would not say how much it would cost to export the spent-cell lining because it was commercially sensitive.

The company started exporting thousands of tonnes of the byproduct in 2010 to Europe to help solve the smelter's waste problem.

Holcim managing director Jeremy Smith said the smelter was its sole supplier of spent-cell lining, supplying 400 tonnes last year.

Meanwhile, NZ Aluminium Smelters community relations officer Andrea Carson said power talks with Meridian Energy were continuing.