This article is 23 years old. Images might not display.
The New Zealand Herald reports that TrustPower, the smallest of the big five electricity generator-retailers, is selling 8500 of its customers to its government state-owned rival Mighty River Power for an undisclosed sum.
The customers, all residential users in Auckland and Northland, will soon get their power bills from Mighty River's Mercury Energy brand.
TrustPower chief executive Keith Tempest said the sale to Mercury completed its market rationalisation, under which the company left residential regions it could not offer competitive prices in.
Tempest said TrustPower would now concentrate on the 12 regions where it already had strong market presence and several other regions where it made economic sense to focus on. Contracted commercial-industrial customers would not be affected by the sale of the residential consumers.
Tauranga-headquartered TrustPower last month told its 32,000 residential customers in Christchurch and Wellington that it no longer wanted to supply them with electricity and suggested they move to Contact Energy's Empower brand.
The latest TrustPower move follows last month's exit from electricity retailing by Todd Energy, which sold all its 22,000 FreshStart customers to Genesis Power for an undisclosed sum, although it too kept its generation facilities and commercial-industrial customers.
