Tiwai Point lies at the entrance to Bluff

Bluff, New Zealand

Bluff is a town and seaport in the Southland region, on the southern coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the southern-most town in New Zealand and, despite Slope Point being further to the south, is colloquially used to refer to the southern extremity of the country...

 Harbour on the southern coast of the South Island

South Island

The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...

 of New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. A spit which extends from the western end of the Awarua Plain

Awarua Plain

thumb|Awarua Plain , [[Tiwai Point]] and [[Bluff, New Zealand|Bluff]] viewed from the [[International Space Station]] in 2008....

, it lies between Awarua Bay to the north and Foveaux Strait

Foveaux Strait

Foveaux Strait separates Stewart Island/Rakiura, New Zealand's third largest island, from the South Island. Three large bays, Te Waewae Bay, Oreti Beach and Toetoes Bay, sweep along the strait's northern coast, which also hosts Bluff township and harbour. Across the strait lie the Solander...

 to the south. It is famous for the Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter, one of the largest industrial facilities in New Zealand.

Background and ownership

The Tiwai Point aluminium smelter

Aluminium smelting

Aluminium smelting is the process of extracting aluminium from its oxide alumina, generally by the Hall-Héroult process. Alumina is extracted from the ore Bauxite by means of the Bayer process at an alumina refinery....

 is owned by New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Limited, which is owned by by Rio Tinto Aluminium (RTA) (79.36%) and the Sumitomo Chemical Company

Sumitomo Group

is one of the largest keiretsu, founded by Masatomo Sumitomo.-History:The Sumitomo group traces its roots to a bookshop in Kyoto founded circa 1615 by a former buddhist priest,...

 (20.64%). Ryan Cavanagh is the current General Manager Operations (as of 2010).

The Tiwai Point smelter was opened in 1971. It is one of the 20 largest aluminium smelters in the world and, according to Rio Tinto Alcan, it provides NZ$3.65 billion worth of economic benefit to the New Zealand economy. It produces the world's highest purity primary (i.e. directly refined made from alumina ore) aluminium. The ore is mostly imported from Australia, while the finished product mostly goes to Japan.

Facility

The smelter currently consists of 3 lines of P69 technology cells, with 208 cells each (i.e. 624 total), and one line of 48 CD200 technology cells. In 2009, approximately 750 full time personnel were employed, and 120 contractors. Metal production was 271,902 tonnes. The third P69 Line was built in the early 1980s as part of Muldoon government

Third National Government of New Zealand

The Third National Government of New Zealand was the government of New Zealand from 1975 to 1984. It was an economically and socially conservative government, which aimed to preserve the Keynesian economic system established by the First Labour government while also being socially conservative...

's "Think Big

Think Big

The New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon and his New Zealand National Party government in the early 1980s sponsored Think Big as an interventionist state economic strategy. The Think Big schemes saw the government borrow heavily overseas, running up a large external deficit, and using the...

" projects.

Electricity

The smelter uses up to 610MW of electricity which is mostly supplied by the hydroelectric Manapouri Power Station

Manapouri Power Station

Manapouri Power Station is an underground hydroelectric power station on the western arm of Lake Manapouri in Fiordland National Park, in the South Island of New Zealand...

. The perceived reliability of power from Manapouri played a major role in the choice of building the aluminium smelter in Southland, with both the power plant and the smelter having been constructed as a joint project. The facility is the largest electricity consumer in New Zealand, and uses approximately one third of the total power of the South Island and 15% of the total power countrywide. New Zealand Aluminium Smelters has a contract for electricity supply with Meridian Energy for the continuous supply of 572 megawatts for the period 2013 to 2030.

Emissions

In 2007, Tom Campbell, the chief executive of majority owner Rio Tinto Aluminium NZ, said that the smelter was amongst the top 5% of the world's 250 aluminium smelters worldwide in terms of low emissions. In 2007, 1.97 tonnes of carbon dioxide was released for every tonne of aluminium produced. In 2008, Rio Tinto Aluminium was declared the second worst transnational corporation in New Zealand, in the Roger Award

Roger Award

The Roger Award For The Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in New Zealand is an annual media campaign run since 1997 by two activist organisations, Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa and GATT Watchdog...

s for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This was due to its threat to close the smelter if the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme

New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme

The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme is a national all-sectors all-greenhouse gases all-free allocation uncapped emissions trading scheme...

went ahead.
The smelter emitted about 600,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases (measured as carbon dioxide equivalents) in 2010.