Newsprint Could Become Major Export Industry

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29269, 29 July 1960, Page 12

Newsprint Could Become Major Export Industry

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, July 28. During the next 15 to 20 years New Zealand could increase its newsprint production to. 500,000 tons annually and save, or earn, £3O million a year in overseas funds, Sir Bernard Ashwin, a director of the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company, told the Wellington branch of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand tonight.

New Zealand’s exotic forests would provide a major industry, he said.

Sir Bernard Ashwin said the Tasman company was overcoming the initial difficulties which arose from pioneering a new industry on a large scale. The difficulties were attributable mainly to a shortage of workers skilled in operating a complex plant. “In recent months operating efficiency has come up the last important 10 per cent, and both the pulp and paper mills are producing at volumes beyond the designed rates capacity,” he said. Sir Bernard Ashwin said he predicted a shortage in some parts of the world during the next 15 years of fibres for pulp and paper making.

A conference in Rome last year estimated that, by 1965, the world demand for paper would be 40 per cent, greater than it was in 1958. By 1975, it was expected to have increased by more than 100 per cent. The world was then likely to need about 147 million short tons. No major supply problems were likely to arise in North America by 1975, but the outlook in Western Europe was less reassuring. Serious supply problems were likely there. “To sum up the world position on fibre supplies, the conference noted that difficulties already existed or might arise by 1975 in Western and Eastern Europe, in the Near East and the Middle East and in areas of the Far East. Such areas are, of course, prospective markets.” Canada, the largest producer, supplied most of the newsprint used by the United States and some of that required by smaller countries.

“The largest single factor affecting the welfare of the newsprint industry of the free world s the economic barometer in the United States.” The New Zealand market for pulp and paper was small and the plant for the industry costly. It was unlikely delicensing of the industry would lead to any spectatcular developments. "Most of the Tasman Company’s present production is exported and when the development programme now being carried out raises production to the planned figure of 180,000 tons a year nearly three-quarters of it will be exported,” he said.