{"id":642693,"date":"2026-10-27T10:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T10:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/642693\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T10:22:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T10:22:13","slug":"meridian-energy-courts-electricity-users-offshore-in-tiwai-type-new-investment-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/642693\/","title":{"rendered":"Meridian Energy courts electricity users offshore in Tiwai-type new investment bid"},"content":{"rendered":"Meridian already has a major deal supplying New Zealand Aluminium Smelters (which is owned by multinational Rio Tinto) with electricity to operate its smelter at Tiwai Point until at least 2044. <\/p>\n
Roan said arrangements with large electricity users introduced scale that reduced costs. <\/p>\n
Shoring up a deal in advance, rather than using a \u201cbuild it and they will come\u201d approach, also reduced risk. <\/p>\n
While Roan said Meridian was scouting on its own, it was open to working alongside other electricity generators if required to get a big company operating in New Zealand, bringing job opportunities and new technology with it.<\/p>\n
He said the work was in its initial stages. However, he wanted to move quickly to leverage the advantage he believed New Zealand presented on the world stage by being a relatively safe democracy. <\/p>\n
Roan said the impression he got from a recent trip to Europe was that Europeans felt they were being squeezed between Russia to the east and the US to the west.<\/p>\n
He said Meridian had received calls from businesses in the Middle East, expressing interest in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy international standards we are really stable,\u201d Roan said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always surprised when I go to Australia, the amount of regulatory political intervention in their markets undermines their competitive capability. We\u2019ve had a market in place for 30 years in New Zealand. We\u2019ve been really fortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether NZ First and the Green Party\u2019s eagerness to break up the gentailers created instability in the New Zealand market, Roan acknowledged elections were a \u201ccontest of ideas\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cost of electricity has risen so it\u2019s important that people are talking about it. But that certainty that we\u2019ve had [around the structure of the market] has allowed us to invest successfully.\u201d<\/p>\n
While wholesale electricity prices have fallen, household energy costs still rose by 9.4% in the year to September quarter, according to Stats NZ\u2019s latest Consumers Price Index figures.<\/p>\n
Roan expected household electricity prices to \u201cstabilise\u201d. <\/p>\n
He said Meridian\u2019s commercial customers were seeing the benefits of softer wholesale prices as their contracts came up for renewal. <\/p>\n
Meridian is continuing to invest in new electricity generation.<\/p>\n
Jen\u00e9e Tibshraeny is the Herald\u2018s Wellington business editor, based in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. She specialises in government and Reserve Bank policymaking, economics and banking.<\/p>\n
Stay ahead with the latest market moves, corporate updates, and economic insights by subscribing to our Business newsletter<\/a> \u2013 your essential weekly round-up of all the business news you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meridian already has a major deal supplying New Zealand Aluminium Smelters (which is owned by multinational Rio Tinto)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1040,138,10632,1686,1667,78,1426,68596,117,111,139,69,4732,17286,10112,315177,16742,1533,80],"class_list":["post-642693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bid","tag-business","tag-courts","tag-electricity","tag-energy","tag-in","tag-investment","tag-meridian","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offshore","tag-operation","tag-power","tag-tiwaitype","tag-users","tag-will","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}