MEMORY HONOURED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 9, 10 July 1943, Page 7

MEMORY HONOURED

LATE MR. H. A. HORROCKS j A memorial stone to the late H. A. Horrocks, founder and managing director of the Whakatane Paper Mills, was unveiled at the mill on Thursday by Mr. W. Sullivan, M:P., in the pre* sence of a large number of shareholders of the company and friends of the deceased. Henry Alexander Horrocks was a New Zealander, being born at Inglewood in Taranaki in 1893, and being descended from the well-known Horrocks cotton manufacturing family. His parents were early New Zealand settlers. He was educated at Kaimaia and at King's College, and served overseas in the Great War. He was a qualified barrister and solicitor. Speaking at the unveiling of the memorial, the present managing director of the company, Mr. G. H. Mackley, C.M.G., said: "On this day, twelve months ago, many of us received the totally unexpected and tragic intimation that our esteemed and beloved friend and colleague, Henry Horrocks, had passed away. Anything that was placed on record on that unfortunate occasion did not by any means adequately express the sincere regret we all felt at the loss his family, his relatives, and the community had sustained. "Reference is made in the memorial card you have to the early life and schooling of Henry Horrocks and to his decision to take up the practice of law on his own account in 1916 after qualifying as a barrister and serving overseas during the Great War. "These qualifications, associated with the strong and colourful background of commercial and industrial influence handed down to him by his illustrious forbears, were undoubtedly the combination which created in his mind the j vision of emulating those pioneers who through the ages have proved their worth and value to the country which gave them birth. . "For a man of his comparatively early years his commercial and industrial experience was probably unique, and those whom he gathered around him in the early days of his planning testify to the value and soundness of his unerring advice and organising capacity. „ A , "Today the industry he fostered so well and so successfully is probably the most highly concentrated industry operating in New Zealand, producing as it does an essential commodity v twenty-four hours of every day for practically seven days a week. . . "This intensive production has resulted in another year of record figures. For the financial year ended last week the mill's output amounted to 14,656 T;ons of all grades of cardboard, an increase of 3248 tons over the previous year and more than twice the tonnage produced during the first full production year of 1940. . "Although the figures I have just given you convey some impression of the size and magnitude of the undertaking, might I be excused for mentioning another side of the industry just as important, if perhaps not more so? I refer to the importance of its exotic forests from whence the major portion of the mill's raw materials will come. The company, by means of its own resources and efforts, under the direction of the late Mr. Horrocks, planted some 50,000 acres of trees which today are ready for pulping. "What better industrial conception could any man have had and hoped to successfully implement than the establishment and combination of a major secondary industry dependent upon the success of a major primary industry?

"We have only to look around from where we stand to realise more fully the magnitude of the scheme and to appreciate how efficiently it has been planned by its authors and carried out by its designers under the skilful and ever watchful eye of Henry Horrocks."*