DOMINION MUNITIONS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 79, 3 April 1943, Page 6

DOMINION MUNITIONS

SUCCESSFUL PtEVEIiOPMESfT Confidence that New Zealand's munitions programme would continue to flow smoothly provided the necessary labour could be obtained was expressed in a joint statement by two English authorities who have been on an inspection tour of the Dominion. They are Mr. L. Cairns, chairman of the Eastern Group Requirements Commission, and Mr. H. Hewlett, officer in charge of the machine tools allocation branch of the commission. During a short stay in New Zealand, they said, they had had some opportunity of seeing the progress that had been made in the last two years in the production of mtini--tions. They had seen the successful development of certain parts of the New Zealand programme that were not even in the planning stage two years ago. One particular project had eafied tor an engineering technique virtually non-existent in the Dominion and employed automatic machinery 0± an extremely complicated nature to make possible modern mass production methods. However, only two and a half months after all the machinery was installed, the project was now in production. In the United Kingdom production of this particular store had always presented many difficulties in the early stages, and the solution of the problem m New Zealand in so short a time was an excellent effort.