FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY MACHINERY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27403, 16 July 1954, Page 13

FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY MACHINERY

NEW WAREHOUSE OPENED IN CHRISTCHURCH The British United Shoe Machinery Company of Australia Proprietary, Ltd., yesterday celebrated the opening of its 5000 square feet warehouse in Wordsworth street with a 5 o’clock party at the warehouse, followed by a late dinner at a Christchurch hotel. The company’s managing director (Mr G. Wigney) and three other Australians. made the trip to Christchurch for the occasion. About 60 guests, most of them representatives of the South Island footwear manufacturing industry and their wives, attended the function at the warehouse. In proposing the toast to the company at the dinner, Mr R. A. Marsh, a director of Duckworth, Turner and Co., Ltd., officially declared the warehouse open. The company is part of a world-wide organisation which constitutes the world’s biggest shoe machinery manufacturing company. The concern has been established in Australia since the beginning of the century, and has had New Zealand branches for more than 30 years. Mr J. A. Woodard, financial director of the company, said yesterday that most of the manufacturing was done in Melbourne, and that until recently the machinery produced by the firm was distributed in the South Island through a small rented warehouse.

The growth of shoe manufacturing in the South Island had justified the expansion of the company’s activities in Christchurch, and had led to the erection of the new warehouse, said Mr Woodard. The new manager of the Christchurch branch is Mr E. W. Chinn, who was transferred last month from the Melbourne office of the company. Mr R. A. Hancock, the new sales manager for the Christchurch territory, yetserday completed his twenty-fifth year of employment with the company. He has been admitted a member of the company’s “quarter-century club,” whose Australian and New Zealand members number more than 70.