Mining And Quarrying

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30951, 6 January 1966, Page 8

Mining And Quarrying

Coal-mining, an important industry in New Zealand for a hundred years, now accounts for less than half the output of the mining and quarrying industry. This conclusion, which will come as a surprise to most, emerges from the first census of the industry in New Zealand, conducted recently by the Department of Statistics as part of New Zealand’s contribution to the 1963 world programme of basic industrial statistics sponsored by the United Nations. In 1963-64 the output of all mines and quarries in New Zealand was worth £18.4 million, of which sand, gravel, rock, and clay comprised £8.6 million or 47 per cent. Coal accounted for £8.3 million (45 per cent), limestone £l.l million (6 per cent); the remaining 2 per cent included gold and the output of other small mining and quarrying activities.

The main interest in this census lies in the comparison between coal-mining and rock quarrying. Of the 6520 persons employed in mining and quarrying, 3412 were engaged in coal-mining. This 52 per cent of the industry’s workers produced only 45 per cent of the output of the industry. Those employed in rock quarrying represented only 41 per cent of the industry’s labour force; but their output was 47 per cent of the total. The disparity between the wages earned in the two main branches of the industry is even greater: 56 per cent of the total wage bill went to those employed in coal-mining, and only 38 per cent to those employed in rock quarrying. As working proprietors are excluded from this calculation, but not from the other calculations, due allowance should be made for this factor. There are many more working proprietors of rock quarries than of coal-mines.

If coal-mining is extravagant in manpower, it is economical in capital equipment. The expenditure of the mining and quarrying industry on productive assets was nearly £2.2 million, of which more than £1.7 million, or 80 per cent, was spent on rock quarrying equipment. More than four times as much was spent on rock quarrying equipment as on coal-mining equipment; and this, no doubt, is the main reason for the higher per caput output in rock quarrying. The figures exclude investment in ancillary industries associated with mining and quarrying—in railways, for instance. While virtually all the coal mined on the West Coast is transported by rail, very little rock quarried in New Zealand goes by rail. Part of the annual expenditure on railways in New Zealand could reasonably be regarded as an investment in coalmining. The census should encourage the search for sources of energy other than coal.