Wool-scouring expert dead

Press, 2 January 1979, Page 14

Wool-scouring expert dead

A prominent Christchurch wool scourer, Mr Iwan F. C. de Spa, has died, aged 66. Mr de Spa was managing director of the family business of De Spa and Company, Ltd, which he bought from De Fosses and Du Vivier, Ltd. in 1969. Mr de Spa came to New Zealand from his homeland of Belgium with his family in 1959 and took up a position as manager of the De Fosses and Du Vivier Company. Mr de Spa’s grandfather established a wool-scouring plant in Belgium in 1872 and it stayed in the family’s hands until 1972. By buying the Christchurch business in 1969 Mr de Spa ensured the continuation of four generations of wool scouring in the family. He married in 1940 and in the Second World War was an officer in the Belgian Horse Drawn Artillery Regiment before the German invasion of the Low Countries. After the war he was secretary of the Belgian delega-

tion under the Minister of Finance (Mr C. Gutt) which represented Belgium on the International Allied Repatriation Agency. In 1946 the family emigrated to South Africa, where Mr de Spa managed a wool-scouring plant. He then took up a contract at the University of Elizabethville in the Belgian Congo as a lecturer in accounting and while there assumed the post of treasurer to the university. But with . independence looming the de Spa family left the Congo in 1959 and returned briefly to Belgium befor emigrating to New Zealand. Mr de Spa was on the executives of the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association and the Canterbun’ Employers’ Association and was a member of the Linwood-Woolston Rotary Club. He is survived by his wife, three sons, and two daughters.