New Zealand’s Flax Industry Can Stand Great Expansion

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 53, 14 February 1949, Page 5

New Zealand’s Flax Industry Can Stand Great Expansion

That New Zealand could annually use 24,000 tons of Phormium fibre in her own industries is considered to be a fair estimate, so that the present yield of about 4,000 tons per year stresses the need for considerable more production. The present supply is absorbed in woolpacks, cordage, matting and fibrous plaster, but another 6,000 tons are required to meet immediate needs, and it is estimated that yet another 14,000 tons could be used in the manufacture of cornsacks and similar forms of coverage. The research worker looks to a production even greater than this, for he has to be well ahead of industrial requirements—especially on longterm projects—and he envisages many other home uses for the fibre (for instance, as a strengthening fibre in the paper-making industry) and supplying the export market Phormium has many advantages as a fibre plant. It is half-way between a hard and a soft fibre, and a good plant contains 12-14 per cent of fibre, which is higher than any hard-fibre plant. At one time phormium was exported in large f quantities from areas in which it grew naturally, and to this day about half of the 4,000 tons produced depend almost entirely on induced or naturally occurring areas of the plant. Year by year these natural areas are in the main dwindling and becoming less economic to work. Cultivated areas, however, of over 1,000 acres have been established in Moutoa, and at Wyndham, Southland, and it is in these places that the future of the phormium industry may well be decided.

To assist in the development of the industry there _is a Government guarantee to purchase the total annual production of phormium fibre, and finance is made available to approved millers of phormium.