Steel Industry Began In New Zealand In 1883

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28835, 4 March 1959, Page 15

Steel Industry Began In New Zealand In 1883

Proposals for a New Zealand steel industry have been many and varied; and now that the Government has approved rolled steel being manufactured in Auckland from scrap metal, history has been delved Into for the original schemes, according to the latest issue of the “New Zealand Hardware Journal." It seems that John Chambers, who arrived in New Zealand in 1866 took samples of local Iron sands to Britain and the United States on a visit which he made in 1876, the journal says. In London he met Sir Henry Bessemer, who believed that although first-quality iron and steel could be produced from local raw materials, It would require a great deal of research work and he himself was too old to go on with it Mr Chambers then visited the Philadelphia Exhibition in 1876 and was put in touch with Mr Joel Wilson, of Dover, New Jersey. who some years previously had patented a furnace which he claimed would heat the iron sand and convert it directly into wrought iron. So confident was Wilson of his invention that he sent to New Zealand W. H. Jones, his chief puddler, to demonstrate the working of his patent A small furnace was erected in Onehunga at a cost of £5OO in 1883, and reports by users were good, but these results do not ap.I.",—,■■■,== . . ■■ , ■.■■ ,

i pear to have been repeated, and r it is not known for certain s whether New Zealand iron sands 1 were in fact used for the Initial 1 successful runs. ' Optimistic Compuy » In a very optimistic atmosphere j a company was formed with a capital of £200,000. and live acres !, of land were bought on the j south-east of the Onehunga raili way station from which a siding 1 was run into the works. It had , a water frontage, and a canal was s dug to enable light-draught ves- . seis to come to the works with 1 coal and iron sand. I The company obtained a lease , of some iron sand deposits at , Awhitu and used a sailing barge j to transport it The sand was n handled manually from the barge up ramps into the works, and was e magnetically separated. 6 Late in 1883, the company sutT fered a great loss because Jones. . under whose management sucy cessful trials were reported to e have been made, quarrelled with d a local bricklayer whom he sub--0 sequently shot in Queen street of s Onehunga, and Jones was sene fenced to 10 years' hard labour. 5i Subsequent managers were une able to repeat Jones’s performance as an iron maker and it ben came obvious that the iron that n was produced was brittle and not e a good commercial article. „ After a rousing opening cere* mony in a marquee at One- = hunea where chamnaime flowed

nunga wnere cnampagne nowea freely, it transpired that the shareholders lost most of their capital. Although various attempts were made to re-organise, little evidence is in existence, but it is understood that for some years the plant was operated quite successfully using scrap as a raw material. This scrap came from overseas ships in the form of ballast and was sold very cheaply in New Zealand, but, as the volume of Imports Into Auckland increased these sources dried up and finally the plant was broken up and shipped to China.