Minister Agrees To Export Of Ironsands For Experiment

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29268, 28 July 1960, Page 10

Minister Agrees To Export Of Ironsands For Experiment

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH, July 27. Reversing an earlier decision to refuse to permit the export of Taranaki ironsand, the Minister of Mines (Mr Hackett) has granted the application of the New Plymouth Public Relations Office to ship one ton of ironsand to Japan for technological research. An export permit will be required from the Customs Department, end Mr, Hackett has asked the public relations officer (Mr E. Handbury) to make formal application for this. .> Mr B. Lyall, of Auckland, investigating officer for Iron Ore (New Zealand), Ltd., will arrive in New Plymouth tomorrow and with the Taranaki Harbour Board will select the area of foreshore from which the ironsand will be taken.

The ironsand will be bagged in New Plymouth and railed to Auckland for shipment to Japan. Negotiations have been concluded with Iron Ore, Ltd., to extract by magnetic methods, a sample >of refined iron or for

shipment. The object of the extraction is to prove that the magnetic treatment, under a patent held by Iron Ore, Ltd., is efficient and economic enough to provide a refined basic ore suitable for the manufacture of iron and steel under certain conditions.

Last January Mr Lyall brought a Japanese industrialist, Mr S. Yasuhara, and Dr. T. Ichikawa, a noted Japanese geologist, to New Plymouth. They inspected Taranaki’s ironsands and expressed the opinion that they were suitable for the extraction of magnetite, a mineral used in the manufacture of steel.

Iron Ore, Ltd., has agreed to undertake the magnetic extraction and the shipment to Japan oh behalf of the public relations office. It has also agreed to supply the public relations office with reports on extraction and on the acceptance of the refined product /by Japanese iron and steel manufacturers.

“We believe we can provide ample publicity and proof of the opportunities available to New Zealand of immediately making enormous export earnings from this source,” Mr Handbury said today.

Size Of Shipment

Criticised

(New Zealana Press Association) NEW PLYMOUTH, July 27. “We are; going to have an iron and steel industry 'some day and it is perhaps as well that someone should act as the guinea-pig,” said Professor G. J. Williams, of the department of mining and metallurgy at Otago University, today.

. ; “Sending a ton is just playing With it, to my mind. Why not permit the free export of ironsands and then we can see how .they treat them overseas?”