Copper Price Adds To Power Costs

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30956, 12 January 1966, Page 1

Copper Price Adds To Power Costs

The higher price for copper—a record was set on the London Metal Exchange on December 24 with sales at £569 a ton, and on Monday sellers were asking £6os—is bound to affect the finances of New Zealand power-supply authorities.

It is estimated that cable for the average 11,000-volt line has become 20 per cent dearer over the last year or so, and cable for underground lowtension work costs up to 10 per cent more. The Christchurch Municipal Electricity Department is more fortunate than most supply authorities, as 12 months ago it entered into a contract for copper at a certain price, and in those 12 months the price of copper has rocketed up and down. But those supplies of copper have now been exhausted. New supplies will cost more. When Mr S. Slatter. engi-neer-manager of the Central

Canterbury Electric Power Board, was asked yesterday to comment on the effects of the record price for copper, he said he was examining tenders to the board for the supply of cable and for transformers, which he expected would be affected in price in relation to their copper content.

“We are holding the tenders in the meantime,” he said. "Usually a tender has a release clause and provision for the price of copper to be entered at the day of acceptance of the tender. We are studying the tenders in the light of the recent rise.”

Because of the steady rise

in the price of copper the board had been using aluminium conductor for some of its work, he said. Mr J. P. Shelley, the general manager of the Municipal Electricity Department, said there were no big tenders out at present. Unlike power boards servicing outer areas, the M.E.D. was mainly interested in underground cable, which was being installed in all new subdivisions and being used progressively to replace overhead wires. There had been some experiments with the use of aluminium underground, but there were no conclusive results so far and the M.E.D. did not want to be a guinea pig. However, if the price of copper continued to rise and became exorbitant, the M.E.D. would have to “have a look at it”

using much overhead wiring except as replacements, he said.

The department was not