Alpine Energy’s loss prominent in Timaru District Holdings Ltd’s annual report
Saturday, 18 October 2025
The spectre of Alpine Energy’s fall from grace hangs over the annual performance of Timaru District Holdings Ltd.
TDHL, a Timaru District Council owned and controlled trading operation, said in its annual report that a strong operational performance had been delivered, but bottom line results had been impacted by the contrasting loss from Alpine Energy (AE), of which it owns 47.5%.
The South Canterbury lines company posted a $12.1 million loss earlier this year following the discovery of an historical error that led to the overcharging of customers over nine years, with the Commerce Commission ordering a $16.9m refund following an investigation.
TDHL received no dividend from AE for 2024-2025, a far cry from 2019 when $2.75m was delivered that had followed $2.65m and $4.7m in the two years prior.
TDHL’s annual report says AE had faced “significant regulatory and reputational challenges” following the investigation.
The report’s “highlights and challenges” page reveals the AE situation had seen TDHL’s share of associate surplus drop $7.7m from $3.3m to -$4.4m in 12 months.
TDHL also recorded a total comprehensive income of $2.3m, a result “materially behind budget” primarily due to incorporating the negative performance of AE. This is down from $6.7m the previous year.
On the plus side, PrimePort Timaru, which TDHL is a 50% owner, delivered a dividend of $750,000. However, there was no dividend from AE, which meant that fund was down $450,000.
TDHL also missed its EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes and amoritisation) target of $2.34m, finishing at -$3.08m, saying that was “due to the significantly under budget incorporated associated loss of Alpine Energy Ltd”.
The report says there were financial highlights and they included:
Total equity was now $186.7m, up from $185.5m.
TDHL’s total dividend paid to its owner, the Timaru District Council, increased to $1.2m, up from $1m.
Property revenue increased to $3.6m, up from $3.3m, with the actively managed port precinct properties continuing to perform strongly.
Investment property valuation reached $71.8m, an increase of 6.5%.
Net cash from operations was $400,000, down from $1.4m, but the company achieved a positive net cash position of $351,000.
TDHL’s general manager Frazer Munro described much of their AE problems as “non-cash” as they were required to carry their share of the lines company on their books.
“It's not significantly detrimental if they go up and down …”
Munro said TDHL was an intergenerational owner “so the value is what the value is”, whether it goes up or down.
Munro said the changes for non-cash incorporations were not a risk to the financial viability of TDHL.
“They’re not masking any actual financial performance.”
Munro, when asked to put TDHL’s performance in a nutshell, said the property portfolio had performed strongly again, and that could be seen in the increased revenue.
“We've delivered some really good projects with the Lyndon Street development (in Washdyke) and some improvement projects at the port. Those have been good projects.
“We’ve done a lot of work on our relationship with our fellow Alpine shareholders, the Lines Trust (40%), Waimate (7.54%), and Mackenzie (4.96%) district councils.”
Munro said TDHL was confident that Alpine Energy’s board now had the skills, capability, and understanding to turn that company around.
“So I think that’s been a big, big achievement for this year, and it doesn’t reflect in the numbers, but getting a good board into that company has been really good.”
Munro said TDHL’s ability to to “pay council the dividend that we said we would” was another highlight.
“We said we would pay them $1.2m and we did do that. So that was a good success.”
Reaching a resolution over the properties it had owned on south Stafford St, including the former Majestic Theatre, had been another success, he said.
Those properties were sold to Rooney Holdings Ltd in April 2025 for $737,000. TDHL purchased them, along with 117 Stafford St, in 2018, and had retained that property which had undergone a major renovation. That property now housed TDHL offices, and would soon house the council’s economic and tourism agency, Venture Timaru.
“That enables us to focus on our Washdyke industrial property portfolio and continuing to invest in our our port portfolio, so from those aspects you know it's been a really successful year.”
Munro said those were all things that TDHL could directly control … “we’ve got our hands on those levers we can control about how our property portfolio performs”.
“If it doesn’t perform well, that's because we're not performing well, and we can control the directors that we appoint to Alpine and PrimePort.
“Those are things that are going well, and those are things that we control.”
Looking ahead, Munro said “we definitely need to diversify our (property) portfolio”.
“Being able to generate that return relies heavily on the property portfolio to perform well, and it is going well at the moment, but we want to increase our return to council, and so we need to diversify our investment base.”
Munro said that TDHL was, at its heart, a property company.
“We’ve got good relationships with a wide range of national and international tenants, so it enables us to to be able to add some value, and to execute those investments and execute them well.
“We're focusing on what we know we do well.
“The mandate that we've got from our shareholder is that we're intergenerational owners and so that's our focus”.