BAUXITE WANTED

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 201, 19 August 1940, Page 6

BAUXITE WANTED

AUSTRALIAN NEED PRODUCTION OF ALUMINIUM Defence authorities emphasise that it is of the utmost importance to the Empire that efforts should be made to discover more bauxite deposits in Australia, Bauxite is the ore from which aluminium, essential for aircraft manufacture, is produced. It is suggested that State Government geologists" departments should be mobilised in an Australian-wide search. Geologists say that few of deposits so far discovered in Australia are completely suited to the production of aluminium by processes standardised in the United States and Europe. Most of them contained only moderate quantities of aluminium. They carry proportions of silica or iron that may make their treatment difficult. The same experts, however, that it is only a matter of searching to find completely suitable deposits. The principal deposits at present known are on the Darling Ranges., in the South of Western Australia, and at Wingello and Emmaville in New South Wales. Overseas experts consider that some anlyses of the Western Auustralian deposits suggest that bauxite of sufficiently high aluminium content lies in that State. The Western Australian Gov eminent recently stated its intention of making a thorough examination of the Darling Ranges deposits. It was pointed out that plans already in existence for the creation of an Australian aluminium industry provide for the use of imported bauxite from India, Burma or British Guiana, if local supplies are not avaialble. The Australian industry is planned first to produce aluminium from aluminium imported in the solid, and later to make its own aluminium. The war has interfered with the plans, but production of aluminium sheets ai least,, it is stated, should not be deferred past nc?xt year.