LOCATION OF INDUSTRY

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30793, 3 July 1965, Page 23

LOCATION OF INDUSTRY

Mr Marshall’s Comment The Government had no intention of directing industry to go anywhere, said the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr Marshall) in an address to 200 engineering students at the University of Canterbury. Industry, he said, tended to go where the market was. “That tends to develop a market, so growth tends to be greater in a developed area,” said Mr Marshall. He said it might have been economic to have located New Zealand’s steel industry in the South Island. “I don’t say that because I am in the South Island at the moment,” he said. “But the location of raw materials led to its being established where it is.” Mr Marshall said that industry often followed the availability of power and labour. Obviously the prospects of an aluminium industry were best at Bluff, where there was cheap Manapouri power. “That is not yet firm,” he said. “I believe it will, in fact, eventuate.” Mr Marshall said that at the end of this month he would open a factory in Temuka. This industry was attracted by the availability of labour. The labour problem, in both Auckland and the Hutt Valley, he said, was acute. Mr Marshall said that the results of decentralisation of industry on the West Coast were quite gratifying.