Mining boss steps back from coalface
Departing Solid Energy chairman John Palmer is expecting the state-owned coal miner’s partial sale to happen about early 2014.
Palmer announced yesterday he is vacating the chair of New Zealand’s biggest coal miner to have more family and personal time now he is 65 years. He has been chairman since January 2007 and a director since 2006.
Solid Energy is likely to be the last of four state energy companies to be partially sold.
‘‘If Solid Energy is the fourth of the SOES to list, then I think that clearly that’s going to be late into next year before it’s in the preparation stages for listing perhaps early the following year.’’
Palmer said the workload for Solid Energy, its chairman, board and executive management would intensify in the next 18 months with the preparations for partial privatisation.
The company needed a chairman to commit all the way through that and beyond. That was why he was going now.
‘‘Just the pressures on my time and the determination to lower my own workload means that despite the passion I have for the company I am just not willing to commit at my age for another three to four years. I just want a bit more of my life back.’’
His chairmanship at Air New Zealand will conclude in two years’ time.
Palmer was at pains to dispel any notion he did not back the Government’s partial sales of the four state energy companies.
‘‘I am very strongly supportive of the privatisation process because I think in a business sense it is really good for these companies to be listed.’’
Listed companies were more scrutinised than non-listed and had greater expectations on them. During his time at Solid Energy the board and management had been ambitious for the company. Listed companies also attracted international talent.
He described the anti sales lobby’s debate as ‘‘shallow and emotional’’.
The appointment of a new chairman was a decision for the Government. SOE Minister Tony Ryall had been informed of his decision to stand down some time ago.
He admitted the board had not done everything right during his tenure and some investment decisions had not worked out, like its purchase and development of a biodiesel operation. But its tra- ditional coal business was delivering and the company was involved in an exciting and boundary-pushing underground coal gasification project.
He said the company could be proud of its environmental performance, especially at its biggest mine Stockton, near Westport, in the past five years.
He did not resile from the company’s decision to hire an investigations company in 2007 to covertly gather information on anti-mining activists, the Save Happy Valley Coalition. The investigations company engaged a university student as a ‘‘coal mole’’ to do that – creating an uproar on whether this should be the behaviour of an SOE.
Palmer defended that yesterday. Solid Energy took security of its people and property seriously, he said.
‘‘What we know for certain is that some of these seemingly innocuous organisations that are motivated by environmental issues will use whatever tactics no matter how lawful or how scurrilous, they will use whatever tactics they can to pursue their ends.’’
The company had to be alert to that and ‘‘we have to use security and surveillance to have reasonable protection’’.