Paparoa Coal Described As Equal To Best In Wales

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28800, 22 January 1959, Page 16

Paparoa Coal Described As Equal To Best In Wales

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, January 21. Paparoa coal, from the West Coast, was the best highly volatile coking coal in the world for steelworks and equal to Wales’s best, a Welshman, Mr Tom Aldridge. now of Henderson, said today. He advised New Zealand to bring out some of the newly unemployed miners from Wales to develop the coal business. Mr Aldridge, who is 52 years old, has been in New Zealand seven years and is now a taxidriver. Mr Aldridge tapped a paper reporting the closing of thirty Welsh coalmines and the dismissal of 30.000 miners. “Get them here,” he said. “There’s all the experience in the world in the mining game. If your Government wants immigrants, it should bring out some of these men. These aren’t coalmines you’ve ’got, they’re gold mines.

a world that is coking-coal hungry and does not want the United Kingdom’s surplus because it is too dear, New Zealand has an asset that could pull her out of her financial troubles.” Mr Aldridge said it was time New Zealand woke up to the rich asset she had in surplus quantities and the prospects of selling it to the rest of the world. Mr Aldridge earned some fame in his home town, Gelli, in the Rhondda, when for seven years he fought a private enterprise battle with the British Coal Board. He sank all his capital, saved as a haulage contractor in Gelli, to reopen and Operate a 2,000,000-ton coal seam as a private venture. He was finally bought out by the British Coal Board and came to New Zealand. "We sent all our coal to the steelworks of Wales, at Margam, and this Paparoa stuff is just as good, you know,” he said. "It’s time New Zealand put its West Coast bar harbours in order so that the big ships from overseas can take the coal out.

“These Japanese buyers don’t come here for nothing. , If you want them, you’ve got to spend some money. And I tell you, you’ll get them. They know good coal, too.” .