WOLFRAM FROM BURMA

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 29, 29 October 1917, Page 6

WOLFRAM FROM BURMA

ANOTHER BRITISH INDUSTRY TO BEAT THE GEfiMAXS. It is understood that Messrs. Harland and Wolff, the great Belfast shipbuilding firm of which Lord Pirne is -the head, are interested in a new wolfram smelting enterprise which has acquired a large property with rich- deposits ot this valuable ore in Burmah. Ihc! purchase price is said to he about £2M,000. Wolfram is one of the revelations o the war: From it is smelted the metal tungsten, which, used as an alloy, has remarkable properties in hardening stoel. From the super-hardened tungsten steel are produced not only armour-plating but nil the high-speed cutting tools that are nsod in every kind of metallic munition Before tho war the Germans had ns complete a monopoly oft'ingfen as they had of aniline dyes. The bulk of the world's sunplv of wolfram ore came from the British Empire, but all of it went to Germany to be smelted. British manufacturers of war materinl. and even the British Government itself, when they needed tungsten had to go to Germany to huv. it- , , j-« , The war, Tins, however, made a riifter?nce. Smelting plants have heen put down at Home, and steel producers are all clamouring for wolfram, and a quarter of a million is gladly forthcoming for an enterprise that ns'tcd vainly for capital fivo yoars aao.