PUBLIC WORKS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 102, 27 October 1938, Page 12

PUBLIC WORKS

NEW ZEALAND ORDERS

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.) LONDON, September 22. "New Zealand buying British" and "Thank You" . were headlines in the British Press announcing the decision of the, New Zealand Government t& place contracts at over £ 220,000 with British manufacturing firms. It was stated that orders for the supply of steel boiler tubes, mild steel billets, steel for locomotives, steel plates and tyres and sets of engine couplers, go to Middlesbrough (£9289) and Sheffield (£10,186). The largest order, for £78,525. worth of component parts for locomotives to be constructed in the railway work- j shops of the New Zealand Government, goes to a firm at Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire. Other contracts for the supply of fishplates, superheating gear, mild steel plates, feed water heaters, rolled steel disc wheels, tent calico, metal faced j plywood roofs, steel plates and stanchions, go to firms in Swansea! (£10,727), London (£11,000), Manchester (£17,112), Chingford (£5909), Glasgow (£6185), and Birmingham (£13,312). ■ In the last three months the Newj Zealand Government Departments have entrusted British firms with more than £500,000 of orders in connection with i a large programme of road construe-! tion, new railways, and other public works schemes. Commenting on the announcement, the "Daily Dispatch," Manchester, said: "The news is especially welcome to Lancashire, for the biggest order of all comes to Newton-le-Willows for component parts for locomotives, while another contract comes to Manchester. New Zealand has usually been a good customer, and in return we buy freely from the Dominion. That is true reciprocity, and we are anxious-that it should be extended. "As we have remarked before,, the Mother Country can supply the greater part of the needs of the Dominions. Unfortunately, she is not given the opportunity to do so- Especially is Lancashire neglected where her great cotton industry is concerned. Japan is too often preferred, yet Japan has openly declared that she would not align herself alongside Britain in the event of a world war."