GAS IN SYDNEY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 347, 7 May 1928, Page 14

GAS IN SYDNEY

DEMAND INCREASING USE BY MANUFACTURERS The demand for gas for heating and lighting in Sydney is not being affected to any great extent bv electricity. The general manager and secretary of the Sydney Gas Company, Mr. Andrew Wilson, who is a through passenger on the Niagara to-day, stated that there was a large increase in the company’s consumers last year. Mr. Wilson and his wife are on a combined business and pleasure tour. There is to be a big family reunion in the Wilson home at Dullatun, Scotland, the first for 20 years. Members of the family are arriving from Australia, Buenos Aires, the Straits Settlement, and other parts of the British Empire. “I am also going Home to get into touch with the modern methods of dealing wuth gas,” said Mr. Wilson this morning. “There have been recent developments at Home which warrant our attention on this side of the world.”

Speaking of the demand for gas bv consumers in Sydney, Mr. Wilson said that last winter his company's maximum supply in one day amounted to 26,000,000 cubic feet. Last year there was an advance of 7 per cent, in the demand for gas, and the increase in consumption for the year amounted to 450,000,000 cubic feet.

Each year sees the list of consumers grow, said Mr. Wilson. He thinks that there is plenty of room for both gas and electricity. Wonderful work is being done in the Australian industries with gas, he continued. Biscuit manufacturers are using it very largely now, and also the manufacturers of glass bottles, who use it for annealing. When the bottles are first made they are hard and brittle, but the annealing makes them soft, so that they can be tempered. This is all done with gas furnaces. WTien Mr. Wilson returns from his world trip, he hopes to introduce some innovations into the Sydney gasworks.