EXOTIC TIMBER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1943, Page 3

EXOTIC TIMBER

VALUE TO NEW ZEALAND PRODUCTS MANUFACTURED AT WHAKATANE. ADDRESS BY MR G. H. MACKLEY. The importance of exotic timbers in the national economy was indicated by the managing-director of the Whakatane Paper Mills, Mr G. H. Mackley, when he addressed members of the Masterton Rotary Club yesterday afternoon. Mr Mackley said there were many people who had not yet realised the importance of exotic timbers to New Zealand. The Stalo owned about 470.000 acres of exotic timber, Forest Products Ltd. about 170,000 acres and the Whakatane Paper Mills 50,000 acres. The utilisation of this vast source of wealth was of great economic importance to New Zealand. Today they were emerging from the stage of blindness to an awareness of the great value of the exotics. The Whakatane mills had launched out with the idea of converting timber, mostly Pinus insignus, to a useful and profitable product. The speed with which the plantations grew to a stage at which they could be converted to pulp was easily the most rapid in the world. In New Zealand trees could be pulped at ten years against the 40 to 50 years required in the case of trees grown overseas. The Whakatane mills had. two forests, one at Matahina and one 80 miles away from the mills. A railway linked the mills and the forest. The logs were brought into the mills and cut into yard lengths and had the bark removed in a huge drum. The next process was the pulping, which was done in a huge grinder, where by hydraulic pressure the little logs were pressed against a grindstone. Screening processes followed. Mr Mackley exhibited some of the products, including children's books, cigarette cartons and cardboard. Waste paper, resin, China clay and casein were extensively used. Cardboard was made in three thicknesses. The pulp Nas picked up by a felt covered copper cylinder. The process of converting wood into cardboard took about an hour. The machinery had to be kept moving, as any stoppages would cause the cardboard” to break. The mills generated their own electricity.

VALUE OF PRODUCTION. Mr Mackley said 15,000 tons of cardboard were manufactured last year, representing in value, £500,000. The mill worked 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Speaking of the industry generally, he said New Zeaalnd used annually wrapping paper worth £425,000, news print worth £490,000 ana writing and printing paper worth £550,000. the total representing an industry worth nearly £2,000,000 a year. Of that amount half of the product was actually made j-i New Zealand and the other half represented imported raw material. If events proceeded as it was hoped they would, the products eventually would be made wholly from New Zeaalnd raw materials. The trees could be grown in New Zealand cheaper than anywhere else in the world and working conditions were good. If the 40 hour week and the high standard of living had to be maintained the community had to stand the cost in dearer products. Mr Mackley referred to the value of wall boarding in building and to the huge saving of shipping space by producing in New Zealand cardboard cartons and boxes for the sale cf commodities.