Tuesday, 28 June 2022 13:55

Power plant to close

Written by  Staff Reporters
Contact Energy chief executive Mike Fuge. Contact Energy chief executive Mike Fuge.

Energy company Contact is closing its 44-megawatt Te Rapa power station in June next year.

The Te Rapa plant, operating since 1999, is a gas-fuelled co-generation plant, providing steam and electricity to Fonterra's Te Rapa dairy factory, and directing surplus electricity back to the grid.

Contact says its contract to supply Fonterra with electricity expires in June 2023. Fonterra will acquire the plant's auxiliary boiler and will continue to use these assets for its dairy operations beyond June next year, but the gas turbine used to generate electricity at Te Rapa will be retired.

Contact says the decision to close the plant will reduce its long-term scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 20% per annum.

Contact chief executive Mike Fuge said it had been an unsettling time, but it was good to be able to provide the 16 staff at Te Rapa with more certainty.

"It is business as usual until June next year, and everybody in our team at Te Rapa will be looked after. After the power station closes, there will be some opportunities for people to move across Fonterra's Te Rapa team or be redeployed elsewhere within Contact."

More like this

Fonterra R&D: Innovation needs more than just PhDs

Common sense and good human judgement are still a key requirement for the super highly qualified staff working at one of New Zealand's largest and most important research facilities - Fonterra's R&D Centre at Palmerston North.

Misguided campaign

OPINION: Last week, Greenpeace lit up Fonterra's Auckland headquarters with 'messages from the common people' - that the sector is polluting the environment.

Featured

Big return on a small investment

Managing director of Woolover Ltd, David Brown, has put a lot of effort into verifying what seems intuitive, that keeping newborn stock's core temperature stable pays dividends by helping them realise their full genetic potential.

Editorial: Sensible move

OPINION: The Government's decision to rule out changes to Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) that would cost every farmer thousands of dollars annually, is sensible.

National

Machinery & Products

» Latest Print Issues Online

Milking It

Cuddling cows

OPINION: Years of floods and low food prices have driven a dairy farm in England's northeast to stop milking its…

Bikinis in cowshed

OPINION: An animal activist organisation is calling for an investigation into the use of dairy cows in sexuallly explicit content…

» Connect with Dairy News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter