Building a $300 million cement plant at Weston is still the preferred option for Holcim (New Zealand) Ltd, despite the latest estimate to upgrade its 50-year-old Westport plant being a third of that.
Holcim has two options for meeting the growing demand for cement in New Zealand - build a new cement plant on the Weston-Ngapara road or upgrade its Westport plant and import cement.
The Weston cement plant option was estimated in May to cost $300 million, a $100 million increase on calculations done in 2005.
In addition, Holcim would spend another $100 million-$200 million on a new ship, providing facilities at the Port of Timaru to ship the Weston-produced cement and upgrading its national distribution system.
It has just completed an estimate for upgrading its Westport plant at Cape Foulwind, calculating it at $100 million.
It would still need a new ship, costing about $40 million, to replace one of its two vessels.
Yesterday, capital projects manager Ken Cowie said Holcim still preferred building the Weston plant over upgrading Westport.
The upgrade at Westport would be spread over a period of years so production would not be affected.
The upgrade would not increase production - currently 500,000 tonnes a year - but would improve reliability and extend the life of the plant by 20-30 years.
That cost included upgrading plant, renewing some of the resource consents which expire in 2014 and upgrading the plant to meet modern standards for discharges.
The new Weston plant would produce 880,000 tonnes of cement a year.
The last major upgrade at Westport was in the mid-1970s, when a third kiln was installed.
Earlier this year, Holcim spent $3 million in "normal operational expenditure" at the Westport plant, which included a $2.3 million upgrade of the high voltage electricity supply.
Mr Cowie said Holcim was still aiming to make a final decision on building the Weston plant or upgrading Westport in the first quarter of next year.
The decision would be made after appeals to the Environment Court were settled over resource consents granted for the Weston plant in February.
Planning for the Weston cement plan is continuing in the lead-up to the Environment Court hearing, a date for which has still to be set.
"Our work at this point is primarily focused on refining the plant layout, technical design and establishing specifications for key plant and equipment supply," Mr Cowie said.
"We are continuing to collect meteorological data and are also revisiting evidence being prepared by expert witnesses for the Environment Court Appeal hearing."
