BEET ROOT SUGAR.

Patea Mail, 24 August 1880, Page 3

BEET ROOT SUGAR.

A Waikato settler writes :—“ The desirability of establishing a now industry, the manufacture of sugar from beet-root, as suggested lately bj 7 Sir Julius Vogel, lias been pretty freely discussed amongst settlers, and there is a general desire to cuter heartily into the matter if supported by the capitalist class. What is felt is that the agriculturists on the one hand, and capitalists on the other hand, must each take their own peculiar and separate responsibility in any such scheme—the one entering on the speculation of beetgrowing, the other providing the machinery necessary for a sugar-making plant. The time is an opportune one for both. Capitalists at the centres of population need for their own and the general prosperity to promote manufactures, which shall give at the same time a good return for capital invested and an impetus to the trade of the colony, and settlers need a market for some kind of produce which shall pay better than any at present available. Some settlers have been collecting information from European countries—France, Belgium, and elsewhere, where the production of sugar from bcol-root is an established industry ; and the result of such inquiries has led to the conclusion that though the expense of establishing a factory is considerable, the profits are large, and that the extra cost of labour here will be more than compensated by the absence of the direct taxation under which the manufacture labours in Europe—especially in France, where a largo excise revenue is raised from sugar beet manufacture. ”