THE HEMP INDUSTRY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 950, 4 February 1911, Page 3

THE HEMP INDUSTRY.

TALK WITH A DISTRICT milder. A well-known flaxmiller informed our representative the other day that since June of last year every bale of hemp milled by him had graded “good fair,” the majority of it reaching a high point in the grade. Asked it it would not pay him to endeavour to mill “fine” he said he did not think so as the leaf he was milling was at times rather bad and in order to improve the quality of some of the hemp it would be necessary to sort the green leaf, clip the tails in the paddocks and also sort the fibre. This would mean the employment of a fair amount of extra labour and he did not think the returns would justify it, as, after sorting out the best of the fibre it was possible that the balance of it would only grade “fair.” In his opinion it paid better to run a mill with the usual number of hands and have the whole of the output grading a fairly high-pointed “good fair’’ than to employ extra labour and get a little “fine,” some “good fair” and the balance only “fair.” Discussing the price of hemp the miller said that he would continue running so long as there was no further appreciable drop in the values at Home. He said that ,£l9 10s in London for “good fair” at the present time was equal 1 a year or so ago, on account of the good price now being received for tow. Some little time back tow was rarely taken into consideration but now first grade tow is worth £7 10s to £8 per ton in Wellington, in fact he had sold the whole of his output of tow up to next June at £8 per ton, Wellington.