COMALCO PARTY

Press, Volume C, Issue 29514, 16 May 1961, Page 16

COMALCO PARTY

Return From Bluff

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 15. "We have achieved what we had to do,” was the comment of Comalco chiefs in Wellington today after their Southland tour. The joint general managers of the Australian company, Messrs S. Christie and E. H Sangwine, arrived in Wellington with four other officials from Invercargill this afternoon. The party, flying in the company’s aircraft, has spent several days in the Bluff area where they plan to build a £som aluminium smelting works. Other members of the inspection party were an official from the New Zealand Ministry of Works, Mr C. W Turner, a head of the Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical Corporation, Mr G. B. Ricketts, and two technical experts from Comalco. Messrs J Finch and T. Oom. The tour was aimed mainly at speeding up preliminaries before work on the huge plant began within the next two years. Mr Christie said that the New Zealand firm to run the smelters would be known as Comalco Aluminium Proprietary, Ltd. The Bluff smelters would be in full operation by 1966, he said. Alumina to be reduced to the aluminium metal would be shipped from Comalco Industries Proprietary, Ltd., bauxite mines at Weipa, in Northern Queensland.