Wide Interest In N.Z. Iron Industry

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30214, 20 August 1963, Page 14

Wide Interest In N.Z. Iron Industry

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 19. The establishment of an iron and steel industry would be a most important development for New Zealand, said the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr Marshall) at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Investigating Co., Ltd., in Wellington today.

The report of the company submitted to the Government »t the end of last year had been a splendid dividend for the people of New Zealand, he said. In carrying out the feasibility study, the directors and staff of the company had done a most thorough •nd efficient job. Mr Marshal! said it was •Iso a job which had been done economically, having been completed with expenditure of less than half the £250.000 the Government had provided. A published version of the report, though of necessity containing less information than the report submitted to the Government, had been very well received. The genera] attitude of the press and public had been one of support and approval. The directors and officers of the company were entitled to feel that they were pioneering in the modern sense in contributing to the establishment of a new and important industry. The chairman of the company. Mr Woolf Fisher, of Auckland, in presenting the company’s report to the Minister, expressed the director’s appreciation of the help and guidance Mr Marshall had given them. Mr Fisher said that publication of the company’s report had created widespread interest overseas. In the months since its publication there had been a great deal of correspondence from firms In the United Kingdom, the United States. Japan, Scandinavia. Continental countries. and Australia, all ot which were interested in some aspect of the New Zealand project Recently, the company had been asked to submit a paper on the New Zealand project

to a United Nations symposium to be held in Prague in November. This symposium was to be on the application to developing countries of modern practices in the iron and steel industry.

A paper had been written by two officers of the comoany. Mr I. D. Dick and Mr T. Marshall, entitled "Technical and economic feasibility planning for a small iron and steel industry.” Mr Dick would visit Prague to present this paper. Mr Fisher said it was clear that in overseas countries there was recognition of the economic feasibility and inevitability of steel being produced in New Zealand. Mr Dick said that as a Government representative on the board he had been imoressed by the harmonious and satisfactory way in which representatives of private enterprise and Government departments had worked together. It was a form of organisa tion which might well be ap oropriate in the future and he would suggest that this be kept in mind by the Government.