MAKING LANOLINE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2711, 4 March 1916, Page 12

MAKING LANOLINE

EXTRAORDINARY FIGURES' Some statements made-to the Federal Minister of Customs in. support of reguest for encouragement of the. lanolino industry have 'surprised drag merchants. The experts said that in a good year 750,000,0001b. weight of wool would be exported from Australia. Twenty per cent, of that weight, or 150,000,000 lb-., was ianoline. If that lauoline werfi extracted here at. tho normal price of Is. a pound, it would mean £7,500,000 a year to Australia. At the present price of 6s. a pound -it would mean £45,000,0011.. Forty-live millions of money is nearly double the value of a normal Australian wool clip, find equal to tho amount expected from this year's bumner and high-priced wheat-yield. Chemists find it hard to believe that there is so much rnoney in the world available from a byproduct of wool. They also point out ,tbat the present 'quotation for lanolino is 45., aiul not os., a pound, and that, as a filet, the. product is already being made here. Lauoline used as a toilet article is boughft by the ounce, not by the pound, much less by the ton, and made up in collapsible tubes a littlo goes a very long way. Still, the manufacture here has been expedited by the war's restrictions on oversea trade and by tho invention of several new processes of lato._ A month or two ago one of the leading makers in Melbourne sent a. few cases to London, .asking Is. 1(1. a pound. By cable they have been advised that the price is too high. It is understood that the fats taken from the wool are all \ised for one ptirposo or another, and that lanolino is mado up out of tho final extract. Though a well-known toilet luxury, it has to compote with many other patented lines, all of which pay largo tribute to Iho modern system of vigorous advertising. In short, it is admitted that lanolino is a good marketable line of toilet requisites, and that Is. a pound can.be obtained for it abroad. It can bo made hero, is being made, and with so much of the world's wool produced in this country the output may ho increased. (snt that the world wo'uld.giva us -£45,000,000 for launhne is regarded as a dream.—Sydney "Sun." ° '