Remediation guesswork in Tiwai talks

Sat, 19 Dec 2020

Talks to extend the shutdown of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter appear to be stuck over the hard-to-quantify costs for remediating the site.The government has been negotiating with smelter operator Rio Tinto in a bid to keep the plant – NZ’s biggest electricity user and the biggest employer in Southland – operating for another three to five years. Those talks appear to not have made much ground since the October election, with Finance Minister Grant Robertson acknowledging a week ago that remediation remained an issue f...

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