HEAVY LUGGAGE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 954, 23 April 1930, Page 13

HEAVY LUGGAGE

GERMAN ENGINEER ARRIVES

BRINGS BIG COAL PLANT Luggage when one is travelling always constitutes a problem. Although the packages which Mr. August Finkbeiner is responsible for, and which arrived with him from London on the Ruahine last evening, cannot actually be classed as luggage, they probably cause him much more worry. All told they weigh approximately 1,200 tons, and the heaviest pieces about 7 tons apiece. His first concern on sighting the Prince’s Wharf was whether there were trucks in Auckland strong enough to carry them.

Mr. Finkbeiner, who is an engineer representing a Arm that is known under the name of Metallgesellschaft, and which has its headquarters at Frankfurt, is bringing with him the machinery and plant necessary to complete what is known as the Lurgi Carbonisation Process. It is to be erected for the Waikato Carbonisation, Ltd., at Rotowaro, and will be used in the manufacture of coal briquettes, a comparatively new form of artificial fuel, made from coal slack. Mr. Finkbeiner stated that this process only came into being seven years ago, but is rapidly gaining in popularity all over the world. He has lately been eng; | ad in the construction of similar plants in England, America and Canada. In the latter country, he said, it was being used for supplying power for railway locomotion. The briquettes are said to be very economical, as fuel, and burn with practically no smoke. Although born in Switzerland, Mr. Finkbeiner is now a naturalised German. With his wife and child, he lives in Bavaria, when he.is at home, which is not very often, as his occupation takes him far afield. In addition to America and Canada, he has recently spent considerable time in Hungary and Greece, and before that in Russia and China. This is the first time he has been to New Zealand, and in his 22 years of travelling New Zealand and Australia are the only two countries that he has not visited. In inland China, Mr. Finkbeiner was concerned with the running of gas plants driven by natural gas, and used in the zinc mines. China, he, considers, was one of the worst countries he ever worked in. There is a little civilisation around the cities, he said, bht outside that there is neither law nor order. In speaking of China, Mr. Finkbeiner lapsed into German, and one judged it was not in enthusiastic terms that he was speaking. “Yes, I have done all sorts of work,” he said. “In one place a bridge and then somewhere else I build tanks. He shrugged a pair of very broad shoulders in a manner that indicated that to him, at least, it was all in the day’s work. But then the wharf cranes caught Mr. Finkbeiner’s attention, and again he lapsed into German. He came out of it again to inquire the capacity of the New Zealand railway trucks. The big pieces, he explained, weighed very heavy. “Yes, the cranes looked very good, but what about the trucks?” Certainly the transportation of Mr. Finkbeiner’s luggage and his seventon pieces is no easy task.