Forest Products Order Fifth Paper Machine

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31177, 29 September 1966, Page 17

Forest Products Order Fifth Paper Machine

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Sept 28. At the final stage of a planned £5 million expansion programme New Zealand Forest Products, Ltd., has placed a £750,000 order with a British firm for a fifth paper machine to be installed at the company’s Kinleith mill. The managing-director of Forest Products, Mr R. H. Smythe, announced today that the order has gone to Walmsleys, Ltd., of Bury, Manchester, against competition from nine other tenderers. Mr Smythe said that in talks with leading overseas pulp and paper manufacturers he found that most were very optimistic about the future of the pulp and paper industry and were expanding production. He was not worried that his company was over-expanding in its present programme “You have always got to be ahead of demand even if you may have some surplus production on occasion,” he said. However, a study of the financial position in Britain and the United States made him glad his company was not trying to raise money there.

“They were suffering from the same thing, a general shortage of money, balance of payments problems and inflation, together with high interest rates," he said. Finance for the Kinleith expansion had been arranged both within the company and through life insurance offices in Australia and New Zealand.