the Tauranga Joint Generation Committee was making a profit of NZ$1.29 million and had 231 employees. In 1989 the McLaren Falls Power Station was decommissioned. Following the introduction of the Energy Companies Act in 1992, after consulting with local citizens the Tauranga City Council transferred the assets of its electricity department to the newly established Tauranga Electricity Ltd. The majority shareholder in the new company was the council owned Tauranga Civic Holdings Ltd, which held 5,099,994 shares with the remaining six shares in the company held by the public. In June 1993 Tauranga Civic Holdings Ltd took full control. By that year the company had 5,576 customers. Tauranga Electric Power Board Using the provisions of the Electric Power Boards Act of 1918 proposals were put to create a power board to supply the rural areas of the Bay of Plenty. As a result, the Tauranga Electric Power Board was established and held its first meeting on 13 September 1923. The following year a poll of ratepayers in the board's area which covered 667 square miles (1,753 km2), including the towns of Katikati, Mt Maunganui and Te Puke the board raised a loan of £110,000 to construct its distribution system. Rather than build its own power stations the board arranged to obtain its electricity from the Electricity Department of the Tauranga Borough Council. Following his resignation from Tauranga Borough Council Lloyd Mandeno took up a position as general manager of the Tauranga Electric Power Board in January 1926. He was only in the position until he resigned on 25 May of that year, leaving the position in August, to go into private practice in Auckland. However the board retained him as their consulting engineer on an annual retaining fee of £250 plus travelling expenses, a position he retained until 1929. While involved with the power board he invented, developed and introduced into service the single wire earth return reticulation system. This allowed the board to reduce the cost of distributing electricity across its predominantly rural customer base. In response to the State Hydro-Electric Department (SHD), introducing charging for peak demand the power board in 1952 introduced what is believed to have been the world's first automatic load control system. That same year the power board also began manufacturing pre-stressed concrete power poles. It is believed that it was one of the first power boards to do this in New Zealand. In