Project worth $8 million capital to start at Tiwai Pt. Plant

The aluminium smelters in New Zealand have again decided to let its finances flow after months of tough cutbacks. A project worth $8 million capital has replaced reduction lines standby transformer and is carried out at Tiwai Pt. Plant. The NZAS has employed the Southland firms for carrying out the infrastructure work.

Gretta Stephens, the general manager of NZAS, said this important project was a part of $70m capital that had to be stopped in the year 2012. The project started again after negotiations were made in the power agreement.

It is expected the new transformer would be shipped from Korea’s Hyosung factory to NZAS and will arrive in the coming month. Commissioning would occur in the month of June or July. Gretta Stephens said, the new transformer was a replacement for the old one that has served almost 45 years.

The new standby transformer would be kept in stock and only used when the rest 4 transformers needed any kind of maintenance. This will also ensure there is no loss of production. It would be an added security in electric supply in case any of the four transformers stop working, said Stephens.

"Other projects that were on hold during 2012-2013 have now been re-activated; however we still only have a modest capital budget for 2014."

Since 2009, this replacement was the last one, two other transformers were commissioned in the year 2010 June and 2012 March.