Prime Minister Christopher Luxon joined industrious staff of an East Tamaki business on Tuesday to celebrate its 75 years of successful trading mostly in the energy sector.
PLP NZ started in Grey Lynn in the 1950s as Electropar Ltd, moved to East Tamaki in 1995 and was acquired by United States-owned PLP Global in 2010.
PLP NZ says it “designs and manufactures the majority of [electricity] substation solutions in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific and was awarded a series of critical infrastructure projects for grid interconnection between New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria along with the largest wind farm to be constructed in Australia, at Golden Plains near Ballarat, Victoria”.
On his visit to PLP, Prime Minister Luxon, who is also the local Botany MP, told the staff of the importance the work that they are doing.
He was led on the tour of PLP by its managing director of 13 years Brett Hewitt, and Simon Pratt, the sales and marketing general manager, who has been with the company for 27 years and explained in informative detail every aspect of the operations to Luxon.
At the end of his tour and when cutting the company’s 75th birthday cake with Hewitt, Luxon told the gathered staff that within five minutes of every conversation he has with other world leaders, the subject always turns to the energy sector.
“In all countries, energy is critical,” said Luxon. “It makes a huge difference to how quickly an economy can grow.”
Fresh off the back of the Government’s Budget announcement last week about its new Investment Boost scheme, Luxon said: “We want to encourage companies like PLP and other businesses to be able to make investments in plant and equipment.”
Luxon’s visit had a noticeable positive impact with PLP staff members, as he walked through the manufacturing and warehousing areas, talking with the workers and showing interest in what they do and how.
There were also plenty of selfie photos taken with the Prime Minister.
“It’s great to see a world-class organisation like PLP,” Luxon said. “The work you are doing is very important and you should be very proud.”
Hewitt told the Times PLP Global has either bases or supplies into markets of more than 150 countries.
“We offer a wide range of engineering and product solutions for overhead and underground in electricity distribution networks, transmission, telecommunications and wide range of industrial and marine solutions.
“In addition to manufacturing our traditional products, many of our international operations provide products uniquely suited to meet the need our customers,” Hewitt said.
According to Inland Revenue, Investment Boost is “a new deduction available to New Zealand businesses when they purchase new capital assets for their business”.
“The deduction allows businesses to accelerate the depreciation of their assets by taking a larger deduction in the year of purchase.”
The Government says, “Investment Boost supports productivity and economic growth by providing a benefit to businesses that make new investments”.
“More investment means greater productivity and higher wages for working New Zealanders.
“Businesses can deduct 20 per cent of the cost of new assets in the year that they purchase the asset.”
Companies will be able to claim both Investment Boost and a standard depreciation deduction in the year assets are purchased.
