NEW HEMP MILLS

Hokitika Guardian, 21 September 1929, Page 5

NEW HEMP MILLS

DUNEDIN COMPANY’S VENTURE.

DUNEDIN, September 19,

; A new development in local secondary industries was heralded with the filing yesterday of the prospectus of the Dominion Hemp Mills Company, Ltd. This prospectus' will be available to the public within a few days. * The capital of the new company ■ will be £IOO,OOO to be issued in £1 shares. The company proposes to use the Dominion’s mature flax fibre and tow in the manufacture of sacking, hessians, bags, sacks, wool packs, engineers’ wiping waste, oakum, and padding materials. :

It is proposed to erect the works-at Outram, bn a site having an area of four acres. The whole plant will be electrically driven.; -Considerable quantities of (flax .are >already growing in the districts adjacent to. Outram, and it is understood-that a start has been made by some enterprising farmers to cultivate the plant in the’Taieri basin. A large quantity of the flax will come from the districts south of Dunedin where some thousands of tons of leaf are produced annually. The company proposes to lay down a branch railway which will traverse the centre of the works and' will connect with the Outram branch line, i Mass production with the very latest machinery is intended, and it is quite possible that later another plant will be erected inthe North Island.-*

The wool packs and certain of the bags to be made are free of loose surface fibres, which hare hitherto caused considerable trouble to manufacturers by becoming mingled with the substance enclosed. For example, it -ia stated that the cost to Bradford, the Empire’s woollen manufacturing centre in rectifying the trouble caused by the fibre thus mixing with the wool.is approximately a year. (

From the time when , the proposal was mooted some time ago the Department of Industries and Commerce has shown a keen interest in the project and the venture promises to be of economic importance to the Dominion*.