PREPARATIONS FOR THE FAIR

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28888, 7 May 1959, Page 19

PREPARATIONS FOR THE FAIR

To run the New Zealand Industries Fair, the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association elects a committee from its members. This committee, with its executive officers, Mr R. T. Alston, who is secretary of the association and secretary-manager of the fair, and Mr J. D. Mcßrearty, the assistantmanager, make the preparations and supervise the fair under the general guidance of the council of the association. The chairman of the fair executive this year is Mr A. R. Cutler, general manager of Motor Assemblies Ltd. Mr Alston “came of age” in industries fair organising last year, and this year is the twentysecond year in which he has organised a fair. He began in 1937 when the fair, known then as the Winter Show and with manufactured products sharing the show with farm produce, was held in the wool store of Dalgety and Company Ltd., in Moorhouse avenue. Most of his experience was in the King Edward Barracks, but the big building there became inadequate to meet the demand for exhibits and entertainments, and for two years there was a “spill-over” into buildings

on the site now occupied by the Public Service Garage and workshops on the corner of Montreal street and St. Asaph street. Leased When New Zealand Breweries Ltd., concentrated all their business at their new headquarters, the Manufacturers’ Association saw in the rambling old brewery buildings in Ferry road a good fair site, and negotiations with the purchasers of the main buildings, the Christchurch Transport Board, ended in a lease being obtained. One day, the manufacturers hope the association will have its own big industrial fair building and some of the proceeds from previous fairs are held in trust to that end. Meanwhile, the old brewery buildings have taken on a “new look” and come to be regarded as the Industries Fair buildings. Anyone visiting the buildings even a few months before the fair would find it hard to believe that from the dusty and dark rooms used for storage there could emerge -the orderly, clean and bright exhibition that will open this evening.

Actually, a visitor yesterday would have found the brightness, but not the order, for exhibitors are always anxious that their products should not be put ort display until the last minute, and there are inevitably final touches —perhaps a daub of paint, perhaps the shifting of a light to give better effect—discovered as necessary only hours before the fair opens.

Preparations for an Industries Fair begin almost as soon as one ends, sooner sometimes for exhibitors, like many visitors to holiday resorts, book from one year to another. All the space for the present fair was sold months ago, and staff have been working at the buildings since early in the year.

To get the buildings ready for a fair, almost every class of tradesman has to put in long hours, and the organisers are fortunate that they have a hard corps of “old hands” who have been working on Industries Fairs almost as long as Mr Alston.

More than 100 tradesmen were working on the fair up to the last few days, when exhibitors took over and started moving in their machinery and displays.