Golden bay cement
Golden Bay Cement is New Zealand’s only domestic producer of cement, supplying roughly one million
tonnes each year.
(Another strategic asset VERY much like the Marsden Pt Oil Refinery refer to Dig-in at Marsden [reinstate the Refinery campaign] on facebook and Telegram).
What is happening?
Golden Bay Cement is owned by Fletchers who also own the down-stream ready mix company Firth Concrete.
Here were some recommendations made by NZ Infrastructure Commission (Te Waihanga) Infrastructure Resources Study Nov 2021.
𝑹𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑻𝒆𝒏 - Supporting domestic industries through climate change:
We recommend
that climate change policies such as MBIE’s Building for Climate Change ensure that domestically
produced cement is not put at a competitive disadvantage to imported cement and clinker due to
differences in the way the costs of carbon are accounted for.
𝑹𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑬𝒍𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 - Creating better incentives for the use of *pozzolans: We recommend that
further work is undertaken to consider if the incentives for increasing the use of *pozzolans into
cement and during concrete batching can be improved. In particular considering:
• whether pozzolans would be competitive against clinker based cement if the costs of carbon
were accounted for; and
• whether there is any way to set incentives so that pozzolans will be introduced at concrete
batching facilities where the carbon abatement costs are less than the price of a carbon
credit.
𝑹𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑻𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒗𝒆 - to support increased use of pozzolans: We recommend
that Concrete NZ work with MBIE to provide guidance on how the use of natural pozzolans affects
early compressive strength gain and how increasing the use of pozzolans in concrete can be done by
demonstrating it still complies with New Zealand standards.
* pozzolans - a broad class of siliceous and aluminous materials which, in themselves, possess little or no cementitious value but which will, in finely divided form and in the presence of water, react chemically with calcium hydroxide at ordinary temperature to form compounds possessing cementitious properties. (ref Wikipedia)
