New Zealand Utilities meet in Wellington February 22, 2008 – Meridian Energy recently hosted the first APUG meeting for utility companies in New Zealand. Held at their new 5 Star rated commercial office building on Wellington's waterfront, ten utilities attended the meeting with a guest appearance from Alan Jenkins, Chief Executive of the Electricity Networks Association (ENA). Amongst the invited guests were Vector, Northpower, Connetics, Genesis Energy, Todd Energy, Mighty River Power, Contact Energy and Liquigas. Shayne Gray, Procurement Manager from Meridian Energy and Geoff Keenan, Contract Support Manager from Transpower opened the meeting by giving an overview of their involvement, and the benefits that they have realised from their membership of the APUG. This was followed by a presentation by Duncan Colling, Managing Director of Achilles Hong Kong on the scope of APUG’s activities, including the current APUG Working Groups and Supplier Management Systems. Matt Collins, Managing Director for Achilles’ operations in Australia and New Zealand said, “There is definite interest in APUG SIS and the ethos behind APUG. Most of the challenges raised at this forum, such as corporate responsibility and carbon foot printing, supplier sourcing and prequalification, were not specific to one company and highlighted the mutual benefits that could be achieved by a collaborative approach to overcome local and regional issues within procurement and the supply chains of the utility companies. The vast majority of potential members who attended have already expressed a strong interest in joining APUG which is a great outcome and could potentially change the landscape of the procurement and supply chain processes of the New Zealand utility companies going forward” - End -