PRODUCTION OF GLASS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30530, 27 August 1964, Page 9

PRODUCTION OF GLASS

Whangarei’s Firm’s Claim

The Whangarei glass works now has the capacity to produce first-grade glass equivalent to a ribbon a mile long and seven feet wide in less than 15 hours, says a statement supplied by the New Zealand Window Glass Company. The company has invested £1,250,000 to date, including working capital, to bring the factory into peak condition. Actual saleable glass is leaving the works for national distribution at a rate of more than 16,500,000 square feet a year—enough to meet the country’s total sheet glass needs, says the statement. The average New Zealand house uses 200 square feet of glass. The Auckland civic administration block now being erected is a major construction job requiring 50,000 square feet of glass. Of this, 30,000 square feet will be supplied by Whangarei. The balance will be imported fancy glass.

Getting the works operating at budgeted capacity in only six months involved bringing 16 experts to Whangarei from the world-famous Pilkington Brothers organisation in Britain. Together with local staff they rebuilt most of the glass furnace and- introduced refinements in the glass drawing process. The factory now has room for expansion to satisfy the New Zealand market for some years to come.