SPELTER AND THE EWPIRE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume XCIV, Issue 5165, 19 February 1924, Page 2

SPELTER AND THE EWPIRE.

! ■ 7 —o | An agreement has been signed which marks the end of a noteworthy pioneering effort to render the Empire independent of foreign supplies 'of spelter. Sir Robert Home is to be chairman of a company which will bring together .under one control the two largest zinc deposits in the Empire—namely, at Broken Hill and in Burma - and the three biggest plants f for th? production of ginc—namely, Avonmouth, the Electrolytic Zinc Company's works at Risdon, Tasmania, and , the Swansea Vats spelter works. The potential capacity of : these plants, is about 110,000 tons of spelter—in other words, it is more j than 50 per cent, of this country's I requirements, which before the war amounted to 200,000 tons. The Swan-1 sea Company has been established for about fifty years, and at the time of • the outbreak of 'war was in German hands. Germany, indeed, had acquired a pre-eminent position in the spelter industry, and Great Britain .obtained major portion -about 24-5,000 tons —of her requirements i from German and Belgian smelters, | the latter being for the most part .controlled by Germans. Our dependj.ence upon foreign supplies, especially i from Germany, was an obvious handicap to the Allies, and proved a ; contributory cause of the failure to produce sufficient munitions, which I was a painful feature of the early ! campaigns. Such was this depend- ; ence that the Allies were actually i compelled during the early part of the war to obtain spelter front Germany though the Scandinavian counj tries. The secrets of these operations need not be disclosed; but l they were very skilfully carried out. J Meanwhile steps were taken imj mediately to extend smelting in the Empire. An enterprising and adventurous business man, who had financed the rediscovery of a large zinc deposit in Burma—it had been worked centuries before by the Chinese—was ent: usted with the task of buying the control of the Swansea Vale works. These works, which were then under reconstruction, were completed quickly, and produced considerable but inadequate supplies of! zinc during the war. The next step J was to lay down at Avonmouth a very large plant of the most modern' i type, in conjunction with a plant for j | the production of sulphuric acid—: ia by-product of zinc. . Meanwhile the' .Broken Hill interests, which used to, sell their concentrates under long! contracts to Germany, established a' large plant in Tasmania for the production of electrolytic zinc; and the J Imperial Government, in order to' k:cp the Broken Hill industry alivej agreed to purchase for a period of! ten years ending' in June 30, 1930, i (he Australian sulphur production of concentrates. The work of bringing 1 about a combination of the various interests has been extremely labor-' ious and expensive ; but the main aim of the promoters has been to lning the great sources of raw material in the Empire directly under control of the smelters. It was felt that only by so doing could the smelting or manufacturing side of (he industry be made safe, and the urderlying soundness of the scheme lias been amply confirmed. Very large sums of money have been spent on the various works. The Tasnian- , ian works ■represent an investment of not less than £5,000,000, and the Avonmouth zinc and sulphuric acid works represent an expenditure of considerably more than £2,000,000. The zinc deposits at Broken Hill and in Burma reprseent the investment of many millions, —"London Times."