Hudson Civil Products: Tasmanian manufacturer says state government sold it a pup
A significant Tasmanian manufacturer for the construction industry says the Coordinator General assured them their new site had sufficient connection to power. It didn’t – and they say it’s costing them bigtime.
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A heavyweight construction industry manufacturer says it was sold a pup by the Tasmanian Government, purchasing a block of land to expand its operations on the basis of assurances about electricity supply that proved shaky.
Michael Hudson, managing director of Hudson Civil Products, which has manufacturing facilities at Prospect Vale and Derwent Park and employs 110 workers statewide, said the inability to fully relocate the company’s northern operations to the TRANSLink industrial estate at Western Junction was costing the company $2000 a day.
Additionally, the company has had to hand back contracts worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” and lost the opportunity to tender for the Bridgewater Bridge project, Mr Hudson said.
Mr Hudson said Hudson Civil was lured to TRANSLink in November 2021, signing a contract in “good faith” based on an Office of the Coordinator General prospectus that “clearly says there is enough power on site”.
Mr Hudson said this proved incorrect, with little indication from the state government as to what’s gone wrong, nor when it will be fixed.
“We should be out there manufacturing at the moment. Machinery we’ve purchased is sitting in the backyard. We’ve stopped tendering for a lot of work because we can’t increase production anymore,” he said.
“We want someone to care enough to come back to us with some answers.
“We knew there were some issues with stormwater and sewerage [at TRANSLink], but we never thought electricity would be an issue in a first-world country.”
Mr Hudson said he had been told unofficially that it may be more than five months until the site is fully connected, “but no one’s actually put that in writing”.
Were they able to operate at TRANSLink at full capacity, there would be enough work to put on an additional 10–20 workers in the state’s North, he said.
State opposition leader Rebecca White described the prospectus as “very misleading”.
“This is a real-life example of some of the challenges across the energy network limiting job growth and business opportunities,” Ms White said.
Earlier this month, Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Michael Bailey said that the state was entering an “energy crisis,” with demand outstripping supply.
The situation was worsened by new-found uncertainty around the Marinus Link project, he said.
Asked about Hudson Civil’s travails, Minister Felix Ellis said his colleague, State Growth Minister Michael Ferguson, “is working closely with the company”.
“From my understanding it’s an engineering matter that they’ll ultimately work through,” he said.
TasNetworks and Mr Ferguson are meeting with Hudson Civil on Thursday regarding the issue.
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