Scott Base in Antarctica. Photo: Antarctica New Zealand
Timaru's involvement in the half-billion dollar redevelopment of Scott Base is now up in the air following Thursday's confirmation of a change and downgrade in plans.
Under the initial plan, construction of the new base was going to occur at PrimePort in Timaru.
Reclaimed land at Evans Bay had been prepared for construction of the base.
The new base would then be separated into eight modules and transported to Antarctica by ship.
However, that stalled last year when Antarctica New Zealand failed to reached a commercial agreement with its preferred main contractor.
The new plan included building a new accommodation and living building, refurbishing the Hillary Field Centre, and extending the life of current buildings where practicable.
Antarctica New Zealand board chairperson Leon Grice said it was unclear if the new plan still involved Timaru.
"We don't know the answer to that. Unfortunately for Timaru it remains uncertain until we work through a whole range of issues with suppliers," he said.
"We still need a deep water port to operate from, we have a lease with the port of Timaru, so we've got to sit down and talk with them, and we've gotta talk with the constructor and work out what's the best way to construct and deliver it down to Antarctica. So we've made a lot of decisions in terms of recommending to the minister on the way forward. But we don't have any certainty about Timaru at the moment."
PrimePort chief executive Phil Melhopt said he had been briefed on the new plan, but not in great detail and not as to whether Timaru was still involved.
"They have obviously got a new scope and if that includes Timaru or not is unclear," he said.
Antarctica New Zealand's preferred main contractor for the initial plan was Leighs Construction, however, Grice would not confirm if that remained the case.
"That discussion started today, but we're looking through all the issues about who the constructor is and that's commercially confidential at the moment," Grice said.
Grice was also willing to confirm the cost of the project to date.
"We have spent $102 million to date so things like civil works, some of the materials required and down in Scott Base extension of the accommodation, so there's beds for the construction workers. So there's a lot of that sort of spending and also you know we've bought the wind turbine towers and and a lot of the equipment for the wind farm.
"So you know that $100m has been spent to date and then now we need to be looking through how do we take with this new approach, this new plan, how do we deliver all the scope of requirements within the total envelope of $498m."
Grice was confident Antarctica New Zealand could deliver a fit-for-purpose and redeveloped Scott Base within the current budget.