Council pulls out of Holcim Westport purchase

The Buller District Council has reneged on a US$5m plan to buy Holcim cement assets and land on the West Coast. The assets include a water supply and treatment plant, a quarry, land, silos and a packing plant in Westport, Cape Foulwind and Tauranga Bay, New Zealand.

Westport lost over 100 jobs when the company closed its cement works in 2016, after 58 years of operation.

Mayor Garry Howard said the council had been in negotiations for more than a year on the more than US$5m deal. "We had agreed on a purchase price and put that into our long term plan, and which was consulted on," Mr Howard said.

RNZ reported that Mr Howard said concern over the former cement manufacturing site at Cape Foulwind, and the potential for costly remediation works on the land, was a factor in the council's decision.

"Being an industrial site it certainly had some challenges to be mitigated, and it was about making sure that the risks, in regard to potential contaminations, were not going to become the responsibility of the council and ratepayers."

Nevertheless, Mr Howard said the council was keen to get the quarry as a source of rock for river and coastal protection and the council was continuing to work with Holcim on its exit strategy.