Obiturary Sir Reginald Smythe

Press, 9 April 1981, Page 4

Obiturary Sir Reginald Smythe

PA Auckland Sir Reginald Smythe, one of the founding fathers of New Zealand’s giant forestry industry, has died. He was 75. He joined the infant Perpetual Forests Company in 1926. When he retired in 1977 he was the chairman of N.Z. Forest Products, then the biggest company in New Zealand. Sir Reginald held every main post in the company from secretary through to chairman, and looking back on his retirement day he told •an. interviewer he would not have had the company develop in any other way. "The results speak for themselves,” he said then. He was born in Wanganui and educated at Auckland Grammar School Sir Reginald began his career by joining Morris, Duncan and Gyllies. As a young accountant he was given the job of ironing out the problems, of the newly- formed Perpetual Forests Company. He was impressed with the company’s possibilities and joined it. in 1926. When NZ Forest Products was formed

in 1935 to buy the forests, Sir Reginald became its secret tary. ; "We had no clear plans on what we would do with the forests except to produce sawn timber and wooden cases,” he recalled later. "But it was always a Perpetual Forests’ plan that a pulp and paper industry be| developed.” ! During his career with the i company Sir Reginald was! an administrator, financial j genius, and a salesman. i He negotiated the first de-i benture issue in 1948, not: without difficulty because finance institutions looked on pine trees with suspicion. He helped to draft the first, pulp contract to Australian Newsprint’ Mills jn the same year and was intimately involved in take-overs of other > timber and paper companies in New Zealand. Sir Reginald also went overseas many times to get money for N.Z.F.P., his last trip being in 1975 when he raised a $7O million syndicated loan in the United States. ' He' became managing director of N.Z.F.P. in 1963, was knighted in the 1971, Queen’s Birthday Honours/ and was elected chairman in 1973.