Early Manufactures

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 989, 4 June 1930, Page 10

Early Manufactures

SELF-RELIANT PIONEERS Industry in the Early Days THE prejudice against using “Made-in-New Zealand” goods, which to some degree hampers the development of industries today, did not exist in the early days of the colony.

In those times a "Made in New Zealand” article was a thing to be proud of—both by the maker and the ultimate owner. Citizens were more self-reliant, and evidently more energetic. New Zealand’s manufacturing history goes back many centuries. The Polynesian was an adept craftsman, and early established the industries like food preserving, medicine making, timber-getting, implement making, ship and boat building, and the manufacture of clothes. He did not import anything beyond the first shipments of kumera, taro, paper mulberry, karaka trees, gourds, the rat and the dog, with which he stocked his new home. Whale oil, flax, and timber, were exported 120 years ago. The early missionaries introduced cereal-growing and flourmaking and fruit culture. The first immigrants arrived in Auckland in 1842, and the industries established were boat and ship building, and briek-making. The price of hand-made bricks was 37s a 1,000. Soap and candle making date from 1843, and in 1844 the exhibits at the A. and P. Show included "the first manufacture of malt in New Zealand.” Flour from native-owned mills at Rangiawhia (near Kihikihi) was selling well in Auckland by 1846, and in 1848 the colonists were proud that the wheat production was sufficient to render them independent of outside supplies. As early as 1844 the Irish flax had been introduced, and linseed marketed. Rope and cordage works in Stanley Street employed 28 hands in 1848.

By 1849 the local manufacturers were not only supplying the local market, but exporting their wares. The customs list shows that they shipped out ambergris, bricks, copper ore, cordage, flour, kauri gum, maize, houses In frame, w’hale oil, spars and logs, skins and hides, w’halebone. shingles, and pork to the value of over £30,000 a year. The local industrialists were well represented at the London Exhibition of 1850; the exhibits including timbers, rope and cordage, leather tanned with New Zealand barks, woven goods, coal, cast-iroo from iron-sand from a bay on the Waitemata harbour, copper ore, flour, honey, bacon, cereals and many other examples of M New Zea-land-made” articles. A number of exhibits won prizes against the world. Invention was encouraged, and the inventor had his ally in the company promoter. An advertisement in the “New Zealander” of 1849 announced a company proposition for an invention that would have made every New’ Zealander a multi-millionaire if the promises in the prospectus of the company could have been realised. The advertisement read: “The advertiser has succeeded in perfecting the art of dissolving cattle, sheep, pigs, etc., so as to extract entirely the tallow of these animals without depriving them of Kfe —an art by which live stock will yield an unusual return, surpassing anything before contemplated.” At the annual show of 1859 was shown, by Mr. Mason, the “first genuine omnibus built in New Zealand, everything being of indigenous growth except some of the iron-work.”