NO NEED FOR ALARM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 309, 30 December 1940, Page 4

NO NEED FOR ALARM.

Sir Albert Ellis, New Zealand Government representative on the British Phosphate Commission, said in an interview that the damage to the plant at Nauru Island was a grievous loss. S|teps had already been taken to deal with th® position. In anticipation of war risks additional stocks of rock phos-' phate had been built up in New Zealand since about the beginning of the present year. The material had been stored in varying quantities in the open at the fertiliser works and had been drawn upon simultaneously with the indoor stocks. There is no need for the farmers to get the wind m,'" he added. "This is just a difficulty to be overcome and we are going to use every available means to overcome it. We are alreadv negotiating with other sources of supply." 1 ~S > r Albert said that at the time of the raider's attack there was a stock , . ®kout 60,000 tons of crushed and dried rock rhosphate on Nauru. He felt certain that means of shipping it would be found, although the process necessarily be slow in comparison v th loading from the cantilever.