NEW MINING AREAS

Hokitika Guardian, 9 December 1932, Page 7

NEW MINING AREAS

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT IN N.Z

CO-OPERATION WITH AUSTRALIA

JVELLNIGTON December 7. New profitable mining areas in the Dominion, developed by New Zealand interests m co-operation with expert Australian interests, c-an bo looked forward to in the future, according to Mr G. W. Thompson, of Dunedin, a mining engineer, with world-wide experience, who returned by the Marama to-day from Sydney. Air Thompson spent last month in Australia and has been enquiring into tho mining industry on behalf of his own company, Industries, Ltd. “While in Australia,” said' Mr Thomson, “I have been fortunate in interesting a very influential group of mining people in various projects which are being handled by Industries, Ltd., ami arrangements have been made for experts of Australian companies to visit New Zealand with a view to co-operating in the development of several of these large mining projects. In my • opinion the co-operation of the.-.e Austral ion interests will mean a very big thing in the development of new mining areas for this, country, ms undoubtedly Australia to-day is in the forefront as regards the handling of large mining ventures, and the experience of these men will undoubtedly bring consider able advantages into the field of mining in New Zealand.” Mr Thomson had been pleased! in Australia -to find that ns far as the general situation was concerned r feeling of quiet optimism prevailed. In conversation with one of the leading men in the steel industry, Mr Thompson was told by him that they were selling three times as much steel now as in 1930. The exchange rate, no doubt, has something to do with it, but the expansion of the trade is by no means due entirely to that. Melbourne is at present the mos' go-ahead place in Australia. There seems to be' a good deal of budding and the depression appearalmost to have been forgotten by the people, who never mention a word of it.

Mr Thomson spent vm interesting time in Victoria, and particularly a J Yalloum, where the Victorian State Electricity Commission’s large coal mine was at work. Each day, lie said, some 10,000 tons of very soft, coal was mined, and the coal it«elf was of such recent formation that original trees could 1 he seen in it. It was -a very low grade material, and yet by briquetting they were making a product which almost solved the coal problem for the State. “I am sure there must be quite a large field for that in New Zealand,” Mr Thompson said, “It might k® applied on a large scale in the Waikato, and perhaps elsewhere, too.”