WOOD PULP

Hokitika Guardian, 30 December 1927, Page 4

WOOD PULP

The Westland Wood Pulp and Paper Syndicate has engaged Air .). O. W. Stanley, chemical engineer, of Vancouver, to investigate the possibilities of manufacturing, paper and strawboard from the waste wheat straw of Canterbury. Air Stanley has set up a laboratory plant and collaborated with the X'ew Zealand Department of Scientific Research. He formerly was a director of the West T.omlon Paper A! ills, Chelsea, and engaged in research work in America, as well as having associated with the Soquo Paper Alills, Santa Cruz, California. In a report, Air Stanley says Xew Zealand imports

paper goods to the value of nearly a million sterling yearly, including 1000 tons of strawboard. made in Holland from waste straw. After alluding to the suitability of Xew Zealand beech of several varieties for making paper pulp, also two varieties of New Zealand pine, and tawa and knmahi, he says an entirely satisfactory pulp can he produced by the soda process from rimu and "white pine sawmill refuse. Slabs, short ends. etc. are reduced to chips and cooked in a dredger, washed and pressed, and the resultant material is then pulp ready for the paper mill. The cooking is done at a pressure of 80lbs per square inch in a solution of caustic soda. Thus the pulping process derives its name from the solution used. It is pointed out there are 50 sawmills in this district, 15 in Nelson and seven in Duller, and that Grey mouth offers a handy port for shipment. Canterbury, it i.s remarked, yearly grows 227,455 tons of wheat straw, nearly all of which is de-

stroyed, whereas it would yield in pulp for papermaking thirty-five per cent, of its weight. Thus, while sawmill refuse yields 35 per cent, of dry weight pulp from the raw material, wheat straw yields almost as much. Air Stanley is very sanguine as to the pros-

peats of paper pulping here. His full report is due within the next twct months.