NEWSPRINT

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 9, 6 October 1943, Page 6

NEWSPRINT

Its Manufacture

SPECIALIZED INDUSTRY The views expressed in lhe accompanying article are generally endorsed l,v those engaged in the newspaper industry ot the Dominion.

'There has been during the last three or four years n considerable amount of discussion regarding the use of the exolie timbers that have been raised in New Zealand during lhe past fifty years, ,but mainly within the last thirty. The acreage of both Government and commercial plantations is in the vicinity of Ss° 196 acres. The indigenous forests of the” country have largely disappeared from the North Island, but there remains in the South Island a considerable area of millable timber, much of which is inaccessible for the time being, usmi of timber are not generally underetoo . 'Ther are enormously varied. the intention of this article is to draw attention to one that has been tentatively put loiward as a possibility. Jt is the manufacture of newsprint. To view a suggestion of this sort it is necessary to examine what the production of this eonmodify entails. The amount of foiest lands held by newsprint manufacturers in North America—United States an Canada —is over one hundred million acres The total area of this country is sixty-six million acres. And yet newsprint requires only four per cent ot the timber utilized in America. Let us look at what the manufaetui e of newsprint in America involves, lhe position of mills is dependent m all eases on three factors. The first is nccesibilitt of supplies of logs by water flotation and the shipment of the completed product bv deep-sea ships that can berth close to the mills. The second is lhe provision of electricity at a very cheap rate, the site of most mills is fixed by the tact that they can generate their own hydroelectric power at a fraction of the rate required by a public or commercial installation. The third is that there shall be an abundant supply of pure water. Rv this is meant water that is devoid of any mineral content that may affect the colour of the product, or prove injurious to the vastly complicated machinery. ' For when pulp pours on to a newspaper machine it is 199 parts water and one part the cellulose from timber that comes out at the end of the machine, at 1000 ft per minute, in the sheet on which you read your newspaper. Essentials to Manufacture.

Let ns look as these things in lhe order above. Timber is cut in the winter by seasonable labour that may have been employed in harvesting in the summer and autumn. In almost all eases it is brought to water by various methods, where the freshes that the melting snow create carry it down to rivers where it can be assembled into rafts and floated to the mill. , The reason for cheap electricity is fundamental. Taking all operations together a newsprint paper mill must provide upwards of 100 h.p. per ton of daily capacity. If the steam required for cooking sulphite pulp, and heating the drying cylinders on the paper-making machine is also generated electrically, a total of about 300 h.p. per ton of capacity may be required. Mills are being operated in America today without so much as one fuel burning furnace. Where in New Zealand could we get, let alone pay for, 300 electric horse power for one ton of paper? Then as to water. Taking all the mill operations together, as much as 350 tons of water may be put into wood, and taken out again, for every ton of paper made, while also to give an abundant supply of water as the conveying medium in the mill, a total pumping capacity as high as 2500 tons of water per tqn of paper capacity has been provided in some up-to-date operations. This water requires to be chemically pure. In a case outside America where a determined effort was made to establish newsprint manufacture, after the machinery had been installed, it was found that the paper had a purple tint. Chemists eventually discovered that the cause was the steel rollers, and at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds stainless steel had to be substituted. The newprint business is based upon constant chemical research, and so great is the overhead that, whereas it was considered that a mill was not economical unless its output was 100.009 tons per year, this figure has been lifted to about 200,000 tons. The. amount of capital employed in a mill is about £50,000 for each individual employed.

Difficulties of Establishment. ' Having established the site and spent a year or so on the preparation of the blue prints it takes in America about two and a half years before the first, ton of newsprint conies off the machines. In this country the time would be conservatively five years. _ Newsprint consists of ground pulp and sulphite pulp. The former is the timber clear of its bark ground to its fibre, the latter is the same timber cut into chips and treated with sulphur and lime, the product being pure cellulose. The cost of a sulphite plant is double that, of lhe ground pulp mill. In America under the United States Tariff Act of 1922 standard newsprint consists of not less than i 0 per cent, of groundwood, and the remainder of unbleached sulphite pulp. In practice, sulphite pulp represents about 20 per cent, of the whole. Every class of wood presents its problems. Australia has been 15 years establishing the industry.-not oil economic lines by any means, but it has been in wartime a’ useful adjunct to supply. No attempt has been made up to the present to produce sulphite pulp, and some millions of pounds will require to be spent to. make the industry an economic Australia normally requires 175,0()0_ tons of newsprint, New Zealand about 2a.,000, and yet it is very doubtful whether the Australian industry, though the demand approaches the accepted American economic standard of a single mill’s production, could survive without either a substantial tariff or a State subsidy. And if we accept the use of timber ,on the American basis a heavy burden is to lie placed on the newspaper industry, which in effect is the nublic, to provide 4 per cent, of the forest products of the country. New Zealand from the lay point of'view is lacking in the main' essentials that in America govern the establishment of a mill. Such timber ns there is could not -be rafted to a mill based on deep water, and ns there is no surplus electricity a special installation would be required. ’ Kxporionce so far bas shown that thor<* is no source of hydro-electricity to n a cheaply developed. It would seem that, on whatever scale, a newsprint industry in this country could only operate as a serious burden on the community. There are obviously much better ways of utijizinjr the country’s strictly limited lumber resources.