Paper Mill’s Place In History

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 46, 14 May 1948, Page 5

Paper Mill’s Place In History

He was convinced, Mr Ernest Brown, general manager of the Paper Mills, told Whakatane Rotarians on Tuesday night, that history would recognise the Whakatane mill as the pilot plant that had paved the way to realisation of the possibilities of an industry that might well he the start of something almost as big as New Zealand’s leading primary industries.

Having traced the early history of the Company, Mr Brown said that, right up to 1939, when the industry “kicked off,” the late Mr Henry Horrocks was the driving force. Pinus insignis had never been used commercially before, and there were critics who said the scheme was not practical. Now many of those who decried"the proposition were just as keen for the Government to get into a bigger and better pulping and paper-making industry. When the mill started up in July 1939, orders were on the basis of the lowest priced possible comparable imported products. Then came war, with price control, when the Company’s prices had no relation whatever to costs. It was some months before the authorities relented at all. Even then profits were strictly limited and taxation high. Now the mill made a product comparable with anything obtainable elsewhere, the dividends had been restricted by ’the factors mentioned.

Mr Brown then went on to quote some impressive statistics dealing with the magnitude of the industry that has grown up here in so short a time. During the war, he said, the Whakatane mill had saved New Zealand £3,000,000 in overseas exchange and. .saved >.150,000 tons of shipping space. By paying £54,000 in rail freights, an average of £60,000 a year, the mill had turned an uneconomic section of railway into a paying proposition. Over nine years, the mill had paid out £1,073,000 in wages, was paying out £3,800 a week at the present time and had paid £24,000 in taxation. So far, the mill had turned out 100,000 tons of cardboard. Its pri-

vate railway line carried 80,000 tons of freight, and the electrical plant generated and used enough power to light 10,000 houses. Though only a young enterprise, the mill had been a world pioneer in some ways, on account of the fact that conditions here differed from those elsewhere and New Zealand initiative had exerted itself. Talking of world records, Mr Brown mentioned the interesting fact that this was the only enterprise of its kind anywhere where the logging superintendent was the same man who had been the original plantation manager. Only the particularly quick growth of exotic timber in this country had made that possible. After haVing discussed working conditions at the mill with particular reference to the democratic incentive bonus scheme that operates to the benefit of production and employer-employee relations, Mr Brown sketched his views on possible future developments. The mill, he said had used only one-tenth of the annual growth of the plantations, so extension of activities was inevitable, but to replace today’s mill plant would cost 1J millions and to install another board or paper milling machine would cost f million. Probably, therefore, the first move would be into sawmilling as the first step towards an integrated industry to make the best use of raw materials with a minimum of waste. Slab wood could be used for pulping and for fuel. Sawdust could also be compressed into fuel logs, used in the plastics industry or put back into work to help bark and other combustible wastes to provide heat and power. -v .. .. •

Prospects for the development of the milling and pulping ini dustries in this part of the Island were immense, with 600,000 acres of exotic forest within a 70-mile radius of Rotorua, able to produce a thousand million feet of sawn lumber a year. That quantity could make an impressive contribution to the world’s markets.