HEMP INDUSTRY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 458, 8 May 1909, Page 3

HEMP INDUSTRY.

WELLINGTON GRADING APPRECIATED. A large buyer of New Zealand hemp, Mr F. Donaghy, principal of the firm of Messrs. Donaghy and Sons’ Proprietary (Ltd.), rope and twine manufacturers, Melbourne and Geelong, has been paying a visit to New Zealand. Speaking of the waning of the industry in New Zealand, he told an Otago Daily Times reporter that it was difficult to say when the Manila output would slacken off, if it would do so, but until it did the industry in New Zealand was not likely to improve. Latest advices showed that there were in Manila 180,000 bales in store, and, . further, the finest grades of Manila hemp were falling in price. In New Zealand mill owners suffered a big drawback in having to pay high wages and royalties, which were fixed when the industry was much more flourishing than now. The hemp which Mr Donaghy receives from New Zealand is despatched from Wellington, and he expressed himself as being very well satisfied with the Government system of grading that prevailed there. It had, he said, been stated to him that there was likely to be some alteration in the personnel in connection with the grading, and this, as a buyer, he very much deprecated. He did not mean to say that a person who graded at one port could not do so at another, but what he meant to convey was that it was not in the best interests of the system to shift the graders about, for the reason that, once established at a certain depot, they became acquainted with the miller and his output, to the mutual advantage of miller and buyer. When a buyer found the grading by a certain grader or graders to his satisfaction, he could accept the standard set and had no fear of buying, and in the system of Government grading it was the confidence of the buyer that was most aimed at and to be desired.