PAPER MAKING.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 53, 4 March 1925, Page 8

PAPER MAKING.

A TASMANIA** PROJECT. AMALGAMATED ZINC COS ENTERPRISE. Special interest attaches to the Paper Pulp Bill which has recently been adopted by the Tasmanian Parliament, inasmuch as it marks another step forward in an important development of the activities of Amalgamated Zinc (De Bavay's), says an article in the "Financial Times."

This new measure is described as a bill to encourage the manufacture in the State of wood pulp and paper and to authorise the granting of certain rights and concessions to the Amalgamated Zinc (De Bavay's). It sets out that the company proposes to form a company, having as one of its objects the erection of a factory and works upon lands in the vicinity of Burnie for the manufacture of wood pulp and paper. The measure is to be administered by the Hydro-Electric Department of the State. Water rights from certain rivers can be granted to the company by the Minister of Mines and a lease of a strip or strips of land not exceeding a chain in width across the foreshore of Emu Bay, and opposite the lands on which the industry will be conducted, may be granted to the company.

The company is to have the right to take timber for 15 miles on either side of the west coast line, and pay 1/- a cord for pulping wood, and ordinary rates for milling timber, no exemption being made as to any kind of timber. Where the net profits amount to above 8 per cent, per annum the royalty can be increased by £5 per cent for every f 1 or fraction of f 1 per cent, by which the profits exceed 8 per cent., but the royalty is not in any case to exceed 2/6 a cord of 128 cubic feet of timber. Nothing in the Act is to prejudice the rights conferred by the Mining Act upon people engaged in mining to cut firewood on land within five miles of any town.

The company will have rights over an area 70 miles by 30 miles, of which it already holds 17 miles in length.' It is stated that the capital involved in the venture will be £500,000.

At the half-yearly meeting of the shareholders held in-Melbourne on 21st November last, Mr. W. L. Baillieu referred to investigations regarding the possibilities of establishing a paper pulp and newsprint industry, and said that the magnitude of the project meant that much effort "had to be expended before the prospects could be gauged with such certainty as to justify the Board in making a definite recommendation to shareholders. The directors, he said had good warrant for regarding the advantages, which it was not politic to specify, assured to them,which would do much to facilitate the finances and make the proposal more attractive than the ordinary onlooker was able to appreciate. "The Financial Times" understands that two representatives of the company are at present in this country engaged upon a series of tests on a commercial scale with timber sent from the other end.