SCRAP METAL EXPORTS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29384, 10 December 1960, Page 12

SCRAP METAL EXPORTS

Last Shipment Before Ban (From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, December ff. The Korean ship Incharan will load scrap iron for Japan at Lyttelton on Tuesday. She will be the last vessel to take scrap metal from New Zealand before the ban on overseas shipments comes into force on January 1. The Incharan’s Lyttelton cargo will consist of more than 1000 tons of scrap metal. The rest of her cargo of scrap will be taken on at Wellington and Auckland, The ban on scrap-metal shipments was imposed by the Labour Government to support the rolling mill which is being established in Auckland by the Fletcher interests. One effect of the ban has been that more than 200 scrap-metal merchants in New Zealand have formed an association, one of the objects of which is to resist the direction that they must sell to the Fletcher group. The merchants are assembling evidence which they hope to present if a public inquiry into the metal industry is held. Mr J. R. Marshall, M.P., said today that no promise of a public inquiry into the industry had been made by the National Party during the election campaign. He had said the Labour Government’s handling of the proposals to establish an iron and steel industry would be closely examined by the National Government as soon as it took office—but a public inquiry was something else again. It had been suggested that another ghip will come to New Zealand early in the New Year with the object of breaking the ban. This is discounted, as the loading of such a vessel during the currency of the bar would be illegal.

There is no suggestion, so fir, that the new Government will consider lifting the ban pending the completion of its investigation into the industry.