The Rio Tinto-controlled aluminium smelter at Southland's Tiwai Point is benefiting from a "deeply favourable cocktail" of factors that have returned it to profitability and could prompt a restart of its small, fourth production 'potline', said Woodward Partners energy equities analyst John Kidd in the latest of his regular Tiwai-o-meter publications. But the smelter owner told BusinessDesk that electricity prices remain too high to justify a restart. The smelter uses around one-seventh of all electricity generated in New Zealand and had struggled under low global aluminium prices in recent years. It renegotiated its contracts for electricity supply before the partial privatisation of its main supplier, Meridian Energy, in 2013. However, Mr Kidd believes current conditions could be rosy enough to move beyond 'business as usual' mode, which the smelter has returned to recently.

Source: Otago Daily Times April 04, 2017 05:37 UTC