SHORTAGES FORCE PIPE FOUNDRY TO CLOSE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22663, 14 June 1948, Page 5

SHORTAGES FORCE PIPE FOUNDRY TO CLOSE

MELBOURNE, May 20.

Victoria’s only maker of large castiron pipes for water and gas is going out of business. Orders are plentiful, but shortages of iron and coke have proved too great. The Monteath Pipe and Foundry Co., after 75 years, has sold its large South Melbourne premises to Collier’s Transport for storage space. The plant will be dismantled and sold. Normally employing 80 men (150 in boom times), the staff has already been allowed to drift away. Today the remaining 37 were told that work would cease in the near future.

An attempt will be made to have jobs offered to some of them by the purchaser of specialised sections of the plant. Gas companies and the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, main users of cast-iron pipes, will have to seek, in the larger sizes, steel and asbestos —cement pipes, both desperately scarce. The Herald Financial Editor writes: — “This episode shows the fallacy of limiting production with the idea of making jobs spin out. The underproduction of raw materials has driven this firm out of business, put men- out of work, and inflicted another shortage on the public. Probably their men will soon find other jobs, but if more businesses are forced to follow suit under-production will cause unemployment.”