The World’s Best

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 6

The World’s Best

N.Z.-Made Fabrics for Motor-Car Upholstery IMPORTED MATERIALS BEING SCRAPPED THE world's largest firm in the motor industry, General Motors, Ltd., is giving wide publicity to the fact that after exhaustive tests and trials it is found that the woollen mills of New Zealand can produce the finest motor-car upholstery material in the world, and in future only Dominionmade moquette will be standardised as the fabric for upholstering all closed cars built at its Petone bracnh.

This news completely refutes the idea that for costly goods of this class and many other lines we must rely on Imported goods for our main source or supply. The company emphasises that it does not wish its action to be thought entirely a patriotic one; the policy has been adopted on sound business lines as the best paying proposition for buyer and seller. The samples of the upholstery fabrics made on New Zealand looms, by our own labour from our home grown wool, is at least equal to the world’s best, and in some important respects show distinct superiority. ALL DISTRUST DISAPPEARED The company states quite frankly that it approached the idea of using N.Z.-made fabrics with distrust and prejudice, but 14 months’ trial in cars sold for general use and hard wear, trimmed with Do-minion-made upholstery, have shown results which “surpass every expectation,” and was so unquestionably satisfactory that many thousand yards of imported material now in the factory are being scrapped to make way for the all-New Zealand pure wool article, and buyers are now assured of 50 per cent, better value and service from the localmade fabric, which is the most durable one obtainable in the world. Each car requires 11 yards of “trim” to upholster it, and each yard of the material requires three pounds of wool. Had each closed car sold in the Dominion last year been trimmed with local fabric it would have taken over 560,000 lbs. of wool, and £.165,000 more would have been spent in our mills. A STAGNANT INDUSTRY. Official returns show that last year our woollen mills were mostly marking

time. There was a serious falling-off in the production of tweeds and flannels, but fortunately an increase in blankets, shawls, rugs and yarns just enabled the industry to hold its own. The workers suffered with a drop in overtime worked by 37 per cent., while short time increased from 4,400 to 30,000 hours, a big drop in the purchasing power of the employees which must have had its effect on business. THE IMPORTING CRAZE. At present our 12 mills employ 2,500 workers, and the output, all told, of woollen goods and clothing ie only £1,250,000 worth, but our imports of woollen and wool ‘‘mixture” goods, in manufactured form, amounts to over £4,000,000 a year I We can make the finest woollen fabrics in the world from our own new “live” wool; yet we export that and reimport it adulterated with cotton, shoddy and “dead” wool, while our own mills are only running part time. HER EXCELLENCY’S EXAMPLE. Lady Alice Fergusson was proud to leave our shores wearing a costume made in New Zealand from our locallywoven materials. Why then should our good New Zealand women spurn the home-made article for an inferior imported one. How many men ask their tailor whether the suit they are buying is made of sound New Zealand all-wool tweeds, serges, flannels or worsteds? No one disputes that we make the finest rugs and blankets in the world, and Sydney’s largest emporium was recently featuring reversible rugs made in Auckland as a special line in its full page advertisement in the Sydney “Bulletin.” When the stress of war came, our woollen mills and boot factories rose to the occasion, and the N.Z. Expedi-

This is the fifth of a series of weekly features that are Veiny published in THE SUN throughout 1930 , describing some of New Zealand's most important indus tries

tionary Force with it* all-wcol and air leather outfit was the best clothed a-j best shod army in any centre of Great War. If vre can fit ourselvM out so admirably in times of war wh not in time of peace, using our OW I good materials and employing our otra workers? What applies to boots and elothia. applies to almost everything we ugf Our own manufacturers and their workers offer you the highest standard in an infinite variety of products. Whv not give them preference every time acj keep your money here providing eo. ployment for your fellow New Zea. landers? MAKING COMFORT

COIL SPRINGS ARE MADE HERE People who disparage New Zea- | land's marvellous manufacturing industries always make it a strong point that “anyway, metal working of any kind must be a long way behind that of England.” What would this type of people sayif they had the opportunity, as a member of The Sun staff had yesterday, c>f seeing a factory in Auckland where springs were made —the kind of curly springs that are used in settees and chesterfields. In one particular spacious room of the factory run by Takle Bros., Ltd., Sale Street, Freeman's Bay, there are great coils of wire at one end and completely finished springs at the other. Every process in connection with their manufacture had been carried on under the one roof. Intricate machinery, in one swift revolution, twists a piece of straight steel wire, coppered into the rough form of the spring. There is no heaving and pulling, in fact no physical force at all, and there is the coil, in shape for all time. The next process quickly flattens the coil to the necessary depth. Then more ingenious machinery takes a hand. By some means that The Sun man couldn’t see, the end of the stout copper wire was taken Find knotted over the last coil, so as to make it tighter. It was done in a flash. The remainder cf the work was dons with equal rapidity, and before one’s eyes there grew a huge pile of springs of all shapes and sizes, all ready for fitting. The piles in that room ran into several gross, and the whole work kept four cr five men permanently in work. By every test the springs are equal, not only in comfort, but in long life] to anything imported. They can be] .and are, manufactured for every conceivable purpose, and recent supplies were for such diversified purposes as chesterfields, motor-car seats, theatre seats, easy chairs, truck drivers’ seats, railway carriage backs and seats and so So New Zealanders can be assured that even in so unusual a by-way as coil springs, there is being manufactured here a product of high quality.