By PAULA OLIVER
The cloud over the future of the Glenbrook steel mill lifted yesterday when its owners announced a $25 million upgrade that should ensure its survival for up to another 10 years.
The investment by BHP New Zealand Steel is a lifeline for Waiuku and Pukekohe.
Franklin District Mayor Heather Maloney said the news would have a tremendous effect on the region.
"It's marvellous news, because they're the biggest employer in Franklin," she said.
"We knew at the start of this year that crunch time was looming, and there was a lot of anxiety."
Pukekohe Business Association executive officer Murray Wood said the decision was good news from an unlikely source.
"The way the global economy is going, particularly in that kind of industry, [closure] was always over our heads," he said.
The axe has hung over the Glenbrook mill for most of the 1990s, because its Australian owner BHP has been unsatisfied with its financial performance.
Two years ago, the company renewed the mill's number one melter.
But it also delivered an ultimatum to its 1400 staff that unless performance targets were met, the mill would close by 2005.
Yesterday, the workers escaped the axe when BHP New Zealand Steel president Cyril Benjamin announced that approval had been given for design work on a replacement for the second melter.
Mrs Maloney said the scaling down of Paerata's dairy company in recent years had been a blow to Franklin District.
But a strong agricultural industry, and the steel mill, had sustained the area.
The economy was not good anywhere at the moment, she said, and it was encouraging to see BHP committing itself to invest in the area.
Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union secretary Andrew Little said the mill was worth tens of millions of dollars to the local economy.
He said the union knew that the second melter upgrade was under consideration, "and that it depended on the outcome of the latest contract round."
Mr Little said many of the mill's workers lived in Franklin District, and others travelled from South Auckland.
BHP New Zealand Steel said the company was confident that final approval would be given to the project, as long as financial improvements continued.
The mill opened in 1967, using a unique method of making steel in which the melters liquefy ironsand and turn it into steel.
Glenbrook steel mill gets $25m reprieve
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