BROWN COAL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4593, 27 August 1923, Page 2

BROWN COAL.

DIFFICULTY OF MARKETING. PROPOSED BRIQUETTING SCHEME., Although brown coal has now reached half the volume of New Zealand’s production of coal,, there are serious difficulties in the way of marketing it to the householder. In his annual report, presented to Parliament, the Under-Secretary for Mines says: “The brown coal and lignite mines of the Dominion are seriously handicapped in their operations by the difficulty experienced in. marketing the small coal which results from screening for household puiiposes. The effect is that the small coal, if disposed of, is sold at- prices below the cost of production, and this loss has to be made up from the sale of the screened coal, thus increasing very seriously the cost to the consumer of household coal. This is a matter to which I and my officers have paid considerable attention during the year with a view to investigating the possibilities of increasing the market for small coal. If low-temperature carbonisation or briquetting were commercially practicable the present difficulty would ‘be overcome. To ascertain definitely the possibilities, an "investigation is being undertaken by the Dominion Analyst, the necessary plant for conducting the tests having recently been procured from England by the Mines Department for that purpose. lin addition two representative samples of coal from the Waikato and two from Otago and Southland have been forwarded for test purposes to Professor W. A. Bone, of the Imperial. College of Science, London, the recognised authority in the Empire on the low-temperature canonisation of coal. When the results of the tests come to hand it will afford me great pleasure to bring the same under the notice of honourable members.”