Energy Minister Shane Jones believes the situation of two potential mill closures is 'hideous.'
Winstone's Ohakune pulp and timber mills could shut - putting 300 jobs in the small central North Island town on the line, as energy bills have increased significantly for the company in recent years.
Open Country Dairy, the second-biggest player in New Zealand’s $26 billion dairy export industry, says action is needed now on New Zealand's electricity supply.
Chair Laurie Margrain told Kerre Woodham that it can’t be solved overnight, but we’ve just sleepwalked into it for years and years.
He said that we need to get the settings correct because without the energy assets or availability of energy, we won’t be able to attract international investment into New Zealand.
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Carrywood and Morning's podcast from News
Talk st B.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We have been talking energy and with a very very
good reason, because we have Winston's o'er kerney, Pulp and
timber Mills Future and the balance. They've shut down for
fourteen days because the price of power is something they
simply cannot pay. We also talk to the major Electricity
(00:31):
Users group who say we're in crisis. Basically we are,
We're in trouble. And the other thing he said, you know,
when we're looking at at householders having to pay five
hundred dollars per household on average before you even pay
for the electricity. If you want to switch to alternatives,
which is where the world is going and which is
(00:52):
where we have to go, there is a price to
pay for that, and it's an astronomical price that many
people won't be able to pay. So have a look
at that from the residential side. That's in the future
right now. The manufacturers are dealing with this. This is
something so the manufacturers are let the canary down the
coal mine. They're seeing the cost of the power. They're
(01:14):
being told they can't use the traditional power, but they
have to. Just wanting something doesn't mean it will arrive
the next day, Shane Jones blithely talking about oh yes,
well we'll get the hydro damn. Hopefully we'll went. I'll
(01:35):
probably be fertilizing the very soil into which the contractors
are digging by the time a hydro dam gets up
and underway. Anyway, Shane Jones believes the situation of two
potential mill closures is hideous. Winston's Owerkney pulp and timber
mills could shut, as I said, putting three hundred jobs
in the small central North Island town on the line.
(01:56):
Energy bills have increased significantly for the company in recent years,
despite them undertaking a major efficiency and productivity review. Open
Country Dairy, the second biggest player in New Zealand's twenty
six million dollar dairy export industry, says action is needed
now on New Zealand's electricity supply and chairman Laurie Margrain
(02:17):
joins me, Now, very good morning to you.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Good morning, Carrie. How are you to they?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I'm very very well, thank you, and I'm so fascinated
to learn all about you. You keep very quiet, don't
you as a company.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Well, I think we're substanti better at doing a job,
doing it well and getting long with life. And yes,
don't have enough oxygen to do both.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yea to skte about yourselves at full noise. No, you're
doing very very well. But I love your comment because
this seems this is exactly what it feels like as
somebody who doesn't understand the complexities of the market, who
is only going by the headlines. When you say we
have sleepwalked into an energy crisis, it sums it up perfectly.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Well. Well, yes, I mean it doesn't come as a surprise,
an I wouldn't think. I mean, I don't know when
we last made an investment in hydro. There are investments
taking place in the solar and wind power, et cetera.
But you know, the major issue in this country has
gone is a productivity one, and productivity only gets improved
(03:23):
through investment. Investment of capital. Capital is a valued and
difficult to resource asset. You can't have you kin'd at
track the appropriate capital investment here, particularly if we have
an energy situation. I mean, investment can't work with that energy.
And we've got a problem. We've got a major problem.
(03:43):
It can't be solved overnight. But we've just sleep walked
into it for years and years and years. That's without
starting on the Captain's call to stop gas exploration. That's
a whole different Well, it's an element to it, but
it's a whole differentation altogether.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's like wishful thinking. Wanting things to be doesn't make
them so well.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
No. I mean also made the point in the Herald
this morning. You know, government's are all about achieving settings
which attract capital. Good because business creates jobs, business craps
economic wealth and generates growth in our economy, et cetera.
But governments have to ensure they have settings which will
(04:25):
attract capital. One of those settings is the availability of energy.
You can't possibly attract international investment from around the world.
Bear in mind, we do not have enough capital of
our own to invest, so we need to attract it.
We need to get the settings correct. Without the energy
assets or availability of energy, that just simply cannot happen.
(04:47):
So we're just making a point. Wake up New Zillain here,
it's here today. It needs to be sold now.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
And we can only get out of the pooh that
we're in by trading our way out of it. You know,
I think most people now, apart from a few holdouts
except that you cannot make money. You cannot print money.
To get your way out of trouble, you actually have
to come up with something tangible and sell it to
people who want and you have to have a continuity
(05:17):
of that productivity, because if you promise something to somebody
who's buying it, you have deliver. You can only do
that if you've got a continuity of energy and.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Well exactly carry I mean you have. You have to
be competitive internetally competitive. Fain will be competitive, and part
of being competitive is having access to the resources, of
which energy is a key one that sures you are
competitive internationally. If you don't have that, people will not
be able to buy your goods or will not be
able to afford to buy your goods, and the economy
(05:50):
doesn't grow. So it seems I don't think anybody in
the current center government environment would disagree with that today. No,
but we all know that governments go in cycles. This
government will have the time in the sun, and then
the will being the way it is, that we another
(06:10):
government will have their time in the sun if we
don't deal with it now and put in place initiatives
which cannot be over ten and cannot be overruled by
subsequent changes in government. Then we'll be talking about this. Well,
I won't be. You won't be carrying our children, our
grandchildren will be in thirty forty fifty years time. Ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I mean, you have produced a beautiful, spanking new cheese
factory in Southland. It's alternative power, but you don't believe
that that alternative power is going to provide that continuity
of electricity generation.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, the only way we can have continuity of contnitive
available of energy in south And is to keep our
coal fired boilers on standby for what we are guaranteed
to require to run them. Imperiods will reshort of electricity.
So I don't know whether that's six weeks, eight weeks,
ten weeks a year, but we all know there'll be
(07:07):
critical times when we turned down you able to have
to run our plants elsewhere. I mean we've invested, we've
made significant investment in wood pellette production in the Central
on the Central Plateau, and we're converting boilers to wood pellette,
so waste waste product we still have. We have natural gas.
Undoubtedly what I see, and I'm the layman, I mean,
(07:29):
don't don't talk to me in detail about the energy market.
I only know what we have to buy, what we
have to access to run our plants. But we'd go
to have to import gas. It doesn't seem to be any
way around that at this point in time. Well did
nobody foresee this when these decisions were made? I mean, gee, yeah,
am I the only person with eyes open? I doubt
(07:51):
that everybody in business, employment assets have got their eyes open.
But we can't get it changed.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
What does this government need to do now? Like they've
overturned the ban on gas and oil exploration, they're talking
about fast tracking resource consent, presumably for wind farms, solar farms, hydro.
It's still years down the track. And in the meantime
you've got you know, Winstones who have had to stop
work for two weeks.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yes, well, I mean, I mean we will. We will
never stop our plants operating. It's in our DNA. It's
critical to the gals economy. We need to export, we
need export carery, we need to process milk. So that's
not going to happen to us, but clearly we need
we do need fast tracks of the government have made
those points. Well, we need to see it happen. We
(08:39):
haven't seen it happen yet, but we need fast tracking.
We need we need policies which will endure beyond changes
of government natural gas. We bring gas exploration back now,
as you point out, Kerry, will take some time for
the benefits of that to be available to the marketplace
of business, community and news on and the domestic consumers.
(09:01):
But we can't run the risk of what we won't
get more exploration in here if they believe will get
over tenned in six years, nine years, whenever it is,
and it will get over, we'll get government will change.
We won't get the expiration in here. So how do
we ensure that that they've got certainty more of the
same will not achieve what the JELLA requires and will
(09:22):
not fix our productivity and therefore will not grow our
domestic wealth.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Every day on talkback, you know, we talk about what
we need to get to get cracking, to get back
on track. We talk about the need for safer, better communities,
for our kids to have a fighting chance to succeed. Internationally,
that all depends on exporters, on a manufacturing sector that
produces stuff the world wants, and already they're up against it.
(09:51):
You're up against it because we're at the bottom of
the world. We punch above our weight. And it's like
every single obstacle that could possibly be put in your
path is being put there. And yet without without the exporters,
we've got nothing. We're heating. We're heating tins of beans
over dried cowpats.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Well, the good news to carry that we're I mean,
we are the things that we do, and we're competitive
at internationally. Now this country does bloody well. We farm
really really well. We farm to world class standards. We
farm to a world class environmental standard. We're good at processing,
a world class at processing. We're ultra efficient. But again
(10:35):
I come back to the fact to really grow the economy,
you need capital to be invested. You want productivity to improve,
you need to invest capital. Capital is available around the world,
but they have to see an environment in New Zealand
with the settings encourage them to bring their capital here
and build power plants and build infrastructure and develop regions
(10:55):
like Northern The capital is available, they just need to
see the settings which make it attractive to come here.
Get that and we'll get the capital.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Amen to that. So lovely to talk to you thank.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
You very much, pleasure take care, Kerry, you.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Too, Lurry Margrain, Open Country Dairy Chairman.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
For more from Kerry Wooden Mornings, listen live to news
talks it'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Carrywood and Morning's podcast from News
Talk st B.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
We have been talking energy and with a very very
good reason, because we have Winston's o'er kerney, Pulp and
timber Mills Future and the balance. They've shut down for
fourteen days because the price of power is something they
simply cannot pay. We also talk to the major Electricity
(00:31):
Users group who say we're in crisis. Basically we are,
We're in trouble. And the other thing he said, you know,
when we're looking at at householders having to pay five
hundred dollars per household on average before you even pay
for the electricity. If you want to switch to alternatives,
which is where the world is going and which is
(00:52):
where we have to go, there is a price to
pay for that, and it's an astronomical price that many
people won't be able to pay. So have a look
at that from the residential side. That's in the future
right now. The manufacturers are dealing with this. This is
something so the manufacturers are let the canary down the
coal mine. They're seeing the cost of the power. They're
(01:14):
being told they can't use the traditional power, but they
have to. Just wanting something doesn't mean it will arrive
the next day, Shane Jones blithely talking about oh yes,
well we'll get the hydro damn. Hopefully we'll went. I'll
(01:35):
probably be fertilizing the very soil into which the contractors
are digging by the time a hydro dam gets up
and underway. Anyway, Shane Jones believes the situation of two
potential mill closures is hideous. Winston's Owerkney pulp and timber
mills could shut, as I said, putting three hundred jobs
in the small central North Island town on the line.
(01:56):
Energy bills have increased significantly for the company in recent years,
despite them undertaking a major efficiency and productivity review. Open
Country Dairy, the second biggest player in New Zealand's twenty
six million dollar dairy export industry, says action is needed
now on New Zealand's electricity supply and chairman Laurie Margrain
(02:17):
joins me, Now, very good morning to you.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Good morning, Carrie. How are you to they?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I'm very very well, thank you, and I'm so fascinated
to learn all about you. You keep very quiet, don't
you as a company.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Well, I think we're substanti better at doing a job,
doing it well and getting long with life. And yes,
don't have enough oxygen to do both.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yea to skte about yourselves at full noise. No, you're
doing very very well. But I love your comment because
this seems this is exactly what it feels like as
somebody who doesn't understand the complexities of the market, who
is only going by the headlines. When you say we
have sleepwalked into an energy crisis, it sums it up perfectly.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Well. Well, yes, I mean it doesn't come as a surprise,
an I wouldn't think. I mean, I don't know when
we last made an investment in hydro. There are investments
taking place in the solar and wind power, et cetera.
But you know, the major issue in this country has
gone is a productivity one, and productivity only gets improved
(03:23):
through investment. Investment of capital. Capital is a valued and
difficult to resource asset. You can't have you kin'd at
track the appropriate capital investment here, particularly if we have
an energy situation. I mean, investment can't work with that energy.
And we've got a problem. We've got a major problem.
(03:43):
It can't be solved overnight. But we've just sleep walked
into it for years and years and years. That's without
starting on the Captain's call to stop gas exploration. That's
a whole different Well, it's an element to it, but
it's a whole differentation altogether.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's like wishful thinking. Wanting things to be doesn't make
them so well.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
No. I mean also made the point in the Herald
this morning. You know, government's are all about achieving settings
which attract capital. Good because business creates jobs, business craps
economic wealth and generates growth in our economy, et cetera.
But governments have to ensure they have settings which will
(04:25):
attract capital. One of those settings is the availability of energy.
You can't possibly attract international investment from around the world.
Bear in mind, we do not have enough capital of
our own to invest, so we need to attract it.
We need to get the settings correct. Without the energy
assets or availability of energy, that just simply cannot happen.
(04:47):
So we're just making a point. Wake up New Zillain here,
it's here today. It needs to be sold now.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
And we can only get out of the pooh that
we're in by trading our way out of it. You know,
I think most people now, apart from a few holdouts
except that you cannot make money. You cannot print money.
To get your way out of trouble, you actually have
to come up with something tangible and sell it to
people who want and you have to have a continuity
(05:17):
of that productivity, because if you promise something to somebody
who's buying it, you have deliver. You can only do
that if you've got a continuity of energy and.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Well exactly carry I mean you have. You have to
be competitive internetally competitive. Fain will be competitive, and part
of being competitive is having access to the resources, of
which energy is a key one that sures you are
competitive internationally. If you don't have that, people will not
be able to buy your goods or will not be
able to afford to buy your goods, and the economy
(05:50):
doesn't grow. So it seems I don't think anybody in
the current center government environment would disagree with that today. No,
but we all know that governments go in cycles. This
government will have the time in the sun, and then
the will being the way it is, that we another
(06:10):
government will have their time in the sun if we
don't deal with it now and put in place initiatives
which cannot be over ten and cannot be overruled by
subsequent changes in government. Then we'll be talking about this. Well,
I won't be. You won't be carrying our children, our
grandchildren will be in thirty forty fifty years time. Ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
I mean, you have produced a beautiful, spanking new cheese
factory in Southland. It's alternative power, but you don't believe
that that alternative power is going to provide that continuity
of electricity generation.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, the only way we can have continuity of contnitive
available of energy in south And is to keep our
coal fired boilers on standby for what we are guaranteed
to require to run them. Imperiods will reshort of electricity.
So I don't know whether that's six weeks, eight weeks,
ten weeks a year, but we all know there'll be
(07:07):
critical times when we turned down you able to have
to run our plants elsewhere. I mean we've invested, we've
made significant investment in wood pellette production in the Central
on the Central Plateau, and we're converting boilers to wood pellette,
so waste waste product we still have. We have natural gas.
Undoubtedly what I see, and I'm the layman, I mean,
(07:29):
don't don't talk to me in detail about the energy market.
I only know what we have to buy, what we
have to access to run our plants. But we'd go
to have to import gas. It doesn't seem to be any
way around that at this point in time. Well did
nobody foresee this when these decisions were made? I mean, gee, yeah,
am I the only person with eyes open? I doubt
(07:51):
that everybody in business, employment assets have got their eyes open.
But we can't get it changed.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
What does this government need to do now? Like they've
overturned the ban on gas and oil exploration, they're talking
about fast tracking resource consent, presumably for wind farms, solar farms, hydro.
It's still years down the track. And in the meantime
you've got you know, Winstones who have had to stop
work for two weeks.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yes, well, I mean, I mean we will. We will
never stop our plants operating. It's in our DNA. It's
critical to the gals economy. We need to export, we
need export carery, we need to process milk. So that's
not going to happen to us, but clearly we need
we do need fast tracks of the government have made
those points. Well, we need to see it happen. We
(08:39):
haven't seen it happen yet, but we need fast tracking.
We need we need policies which will endure beyond changes
of government natural gas. We bring gas exploration back now,
as you point out, Kerry, will take some time for
the benefits of that to be available to the marketplace
of business, community and news on and the domestic consumers.
(09:01):
But we can't run the risk of what we won't
get more exploration in here if they believe will get
over tenned in six years, nine years, whenever it is,
and it will get over, we'll get government will change.
We won't get the expiration in here. So how do
we ensure that that they've got certainty more of the
same will not achieve what the JELLA requires and will
(09:22):
not fix our productivity and therefore will not grow our
domestic wealth.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Every day on talkback, you know, we talk about what
we need to get to get cracking, to get back
on track. We talk about the need for safer, better communities,
for our kids to have a fighting chance to succeed. Internationally,
that all depends on exporters, on a manufacturing sector that
produces stuff the world wants, and already they're up against it.
(09:51):
You're up against it because we're at the bottom of
the world. We punch above our weight. And it's like
every single obstacle that could possibly be put in your
path is being put there. And yet without without the exporters,
we've got nothing. We're heating. We're heating tins of beans
over dried cowpats.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Well, the good news to carry that we're I mean,
we are the things that we do, and we're competitive
at internationally. Now this country does bloody well. We farm
really really well. We farm to world class standards. We
farm to a world class environmental standard. We're good at processing,
a world class at processing. We're ultra efficient. But again
(10:35):
I come back to the fact to really grow the economy,
you need capital to be invested. You want productivity to improve,
you need to invest capital. Capital is available around the world,
but they have to see an environment in New Zealand
with the settings encourage them to bring their capital here
and build power plants and build infrastructure and develop regions
(10:55):
like Northern The capital is available, they just need to
see the settings which make it attractive to come here.
Get that and we'll get the capital.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Amen to that. So lovely to talk to you thank.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
You very much, pleasure take care, Kerry, you.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Too, Lurry Margrain, Open Country Dairy Chairman.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
For more from Kerry Wooden Mornings, listen live to news
talks it'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!