COMING PAPER FAMINE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XI, Issue 3532, 21 July 1920, Page 7

COMING PAPER FAMINE.

WHY THERE IS A WOK HU SHORT AGE.

xue world has suddenly begun to .ealise that paper is one of the prime necessities of life, and that it is now faced with a serious shortage—which may easily develop into a famine of that commodity.

Taper was never more in request, but. unfortunately, the output of the paper-making industry throughout the world is greatly below the requirements of the numerous purposes to which paper is nowadays applied. This is due to the fact that there is a great

scarcity of paper-making raw mater- j ials, and this, after all, is the crux of | the situation as it is to-day. So far as Great Britain is UTnicerncd, 1 paper-makers’ supplies of wood pulp j have been mainly obtained from Sweden and Norway, both of which conn- j trie s arc suffering from conditions to j which they wore reduced during and after the war by the restricted sup- | plies of coal from this and other conn- | tries, So much was this the ease that ;

an enormous amount of valuable wood \ which would otherwise have been utilised for the production of pulp uas employed for the purposes of fuel in industries, on railways and coasting steamers, and in other ways. In their turn, therefore, Scandinavian pulp manufacturers are handicapped by a short supply of pulp wood, while the high labour costs in, the forests and in the pulp manufactories have been responsible to a very largo extent (for tire increase in values which has taken place. In Sweden and Norway there arc something like 350 chemical and mechanical pulp-making ’concerns, many of them owning more than one mill. Trior tn the war the Scandinavian output of wood pulp was about 2,815,000 tons per annum, of which Britain absorbed nearly 1,000,000 tons, while the United States Germany and other paperproducing countries were also large consumers. Nowadays the world-wide demand for Scandinavian pulps is so much gieater than the supply that the average prices of all kinds of pulp have advanced by no; less than (500 per cent. Turning to the other side of the Atlantic, the pulp and paper situation is probably even worse than in Britain. Canada produces something like (500,000 tons of paper per annum, and after supplying their own needs finds a ready market in the United States for the greater part of the remainder. The Dominion is making rapid progress with the development of its wood pulp industry, the output of which, according to thq latest available official figures, rose from 3(53,079 tons in 1908 to 1,4.64,308 tons in 1917.

Its illimitable virgin forest, areas and its' policy of eonservatie.'n -and reafforestation should in the near nfturo make Canada one of the greatest pulp aiyl paper-producing countries in the world, but to-day she cannot meet anything like the demand for either commodity from the United State. —• which normally takes 75 per cent, of her output of paper —or from'. Great Britain, Australia", New Zealand and South Africa. In * the Tinted Spate's, whore the paper manufacturing industry has attained to enormous proportions, the situation is so acute —notwithstanding that American pulp and paper mills are being operated to their inaxinufhi capa-city—-that American newspaper publishers have urged upon the Secretary ot State the necessity of dragooning Canada into lifting the embargo on the export of pulp wood by the emplovm.ent of retaliatory measures. The Provincial Governments of Canada in refusing to permit the export of pulp wood grown on Crown lands are naturally unwilling to exploit their forests without regard to conservation, but are perfectly willing to continue to send to the United States most of tlrdr output of print paper. It is extremely doubtful whether the

paper consumer—large; or small will j experience muck relief in respect to j price within tke next two or tkree ’ years. While wood pulp continues to ihe the principal raw material for j paper-making, conservation of the , world’s pulp wood areas should cer- | taiuly be supplemented by a thorough I investigation of the -adaptability of | other fibres to paper-making purposes. F>v the Editor of The Paperrnaker).