Holcim

Posted 01/08/13

There has been an announcement by Holcim. They will be building a new terminal to hold imported cement to supply New Zealand. This means that the uneconomic plant in Westport will be closed and the Weston plant will not proceed in the foreseeable future. No doubt there'll be some who celebrate this but sadly the jobs we hoped for will not happen for now.

For those who didn't want the plant to be built in Weston on environmental grounds, I can say that I've been part of enough consent hearings to know that stringent monitoring and reporting conditions do work. Couple that to the fact that this would be a modern plant with state of the art technology, and we could be sure that public health would not be compromised.

Although the proposed plant was not a certainty, it had the potential to bring good jobs and diversity to our economy. Sadly, that is gone for quite some time. But it does underline the need to keep working on new opportunities and that is exactly what I'll be doing if elected.