Canterbury Industry
prises about 95 per cent of the business. Copper today is used in some cylinders and boilers, and in coating pans for the confectionery and jam industry. Stainless steel, in the home, is used for laundry tubs, sink benches, shower trays, hand basins, boilers, and in some appliances, such as the tops of electric stoves. But a vast amount of stainless steel is used in hospitals, institutions, hotels, restaurants, and in general industry. Tableware In hospitals the material is used for both cooking and sterilising equipment, and also for trolleys, tables and benches. In the industrial sphere there are milk-storage vessels, cheese vats, mobile milk and beer tankers, boilers, mixing vessels, and so on.
Mercers also make a wide range of stainless steel tableware for a separate company, Runde, which sells throughout New Zealand. The tableware compares very favourably with similar stainless steel ware imported from Sweden and Denmark. No decorative copperware
The firm has about 200 employed in Christchurch, 80 in Auckland and about 30 in Wellington. In 1964 the firm took part in a trade mission to South-east Asia and since then has exported hospital and hotel equipment to Singapore, and is coming to arrangement with a Singapore firm for manufacture under licence there. The company is looking forward to greater export trade, particularly in pressed products. With its large presses there is capacity for large production, and the small New Zealand market does not use the machines to anything like full capacity. The company has its own design staff and there is an arrangement for the manufacture of sterilising equipment with an American firm and a British firm. These firms supply Mercers with technical information, a necessary arrangement, as the market in New Zealand is not sufficiently large for Mercers to do development work and research.
There is also an arrangement with a British firm for the manufacture of dyeing equipment, also a very specialised field, and tea and coffee-making equipment is made under an arrangement
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19661105.2.79
Bibliographic details
Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31209, 5 November 1966, Page 12
Word Count
331Canterbury Industry Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31209, 5 November 1966, Page 12
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Acknowledgements
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