Strengthening Of Economy

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30862, 22 September 1965, Page 1

Strengthening Of Economy

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, Sept. 21.

“We shall not, in the foreseeable future, make all our steel ourselves—there is hardly a country that does—and we shall continue to import products that we cannot make economically,” the chairman of New Zealand Steel, Ltd. (Sir Woolf Fisher), said today.

“But we can make a very important range of products and, by so doing, we shall make possible more intensive industrial development and greatly strengthen our economy,” he said. Steel imports were costly to New Zealand. In the year to June, 1965, apart from 55,000 tons which Pacific Steel produced from scrap. New Zealand imported 455,000 tons at a cost, including freight, of close on £3O million.

"By a conservative estimate we would be spending £35 million a year by 1970 and

well over £5O million annually by 1980 if we continued to rely on the present extent on imports,” he said. “If present trends continued it is likely that, at present-day costs, we could be spending between £lOO million and £175 million on steel by the year 2000.” Sir Woolf Fisher also said he believed that, as well as saving exchange, there were also prospects of developing an export market in some important steel products. “This, however, has not

been taken into account in our economic studies,” he said.