SCRAP STEEL EXPORT

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 85, 11 April 1933, Page 12

SCRAP STEEL EXPORT

v A GREAT CLEARANCE

WASTE INTO MONEY

"Evening Post," April 11. New Zealand is being gradually cleaned ■up of waste steel and Japan is still a buyer. Another shipment o£ some 7000 tons is to be lifted at Westport, Welling--i ton, and Auckland by the steamer Juj-o Mam. At Westport the scrap will be largely steel from coal mines, including worn out pulleys and truck wheels; at -.Wellington it will be of a very varied ! character, including old tramway material, | also some railway scrap disinterred from the cleared site of'the old Petone railway' shops; af Auckland it will be of a very mixed description, and will include ship plates and boiler plates. Many thousands of tons of waste steel had been shipped to Japan from Australia before New Zealand1 came into the market •with its shipments now likely to exceed 21,000 tons. But the United States alone last year had exported to Japan about a million tons of scrap, mostly of railway material. WHAT DOES JAPAN DO WITH IT? ' Why, .it has been asked, has Japan •been so avid;.a buyer in the scrap market? Not unnaturally a suspicion has been aroused. that these "deals" have a special significance, not unconnected,1 perhaps, •with the present warlike conditions : in the East, remarks a writer in the "Sydney Morning Herald."- The bald allega- ', tion has even been made that the iron and steel from these old vessels might _ be found convenient material for munitions. But this report,'as soon as published, was dismissed by experts as absurd, though on what grounds we "were'riot told. Prominent purchasers have been the Amakasu Shipbreaking Company, of Yokohama, and the Hashimoto Company, of Osaka, both of whom, it is stated, have found it a profitable policy. to sell "scrap" metals in a land notable for its lack of metals. The Hashimoto Company has bought largely in New Zealand. ' The iron and steel from ships' hulls bought by Japan are melted down and used for building new ships and railways. Ship-breaking, indeed, is an established industry in Japan, and there is authority for saying that when a vessel is bought for that purpose from a foreign firm there is a definite clause in the contract to stipulate that she will be broken up. and not Used for any. other purpose. In one or two instances/ when the buyers have failed to carry out the contract, they .have voluntarily come,forward,and paid a sum in compensation. As a fact, the Japanese have always-"played the game" in this respect, and there is no ground to think' they ever intend to do otherwise. ITALIAN PURCHASES. The Japanese are not the only important buyers in the "field." Italian shipbreakers, for example, have acquired no fewer than eighty vessels abroad since the middle of last, year, and are still pn the lookout 'for bargains. For some reason", however,' these Italian purchases have aroused' little or no comment. The circumstances.'of "trouble" in tire Orient eeem to; have focused public , attention' upon Japan; .and a series of perfectly innocent transactions has been given lalse colour by a few serisation-mongering newspapers. For, whatever sentimentalobjections* one may have to the trade in ships'which have "seen their day," every \essel remains a commercial proposition ■until the last nut and bolt in her has been ©old. A useful, if violent, transformation may be preferable, after all, to slow death from -rust and rottenness. ? Of 20, British, vesels bought, by Japan for breaking up eleven were P. and O. crack"liners; one was a big Cunarder, the Caroriia'; ''two were White Star vessels, the. Baltic'and Megantic; one a Blue Funnel liner; two were from the Canadian National' Line, Canadian Seigneur and Canadian 'Kanger; and two were Brocklebank: liners. The Caronia and the Macedonia (P. and O.) were armed cruisers in the war. Japanese purchases for breakingtip purposes last year also included three Dutch,-two Norwegian, and one each_from . Belgian, German, Italian, and Greek .