TIMBER SUPPLIES BUILDING UP: YARD HOLDINGS GOOD

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22824, 20 December 1948, Page 4

TIMBER SUPPLIES BUILDING UP: YARD HOLDINGS GOOD

“If building construction is being held up anywhere in New Zealand, it should not be for want of timber. There is more sawn timber in the country now than for many years, and in some districts the merchants are experiencing the unusual sight of timber accumulating in their racks,” said Mr. C. F. Skinner, Minister of Rehabilitation and Commissioner of State Forests, who arrived at Gisborne on Saturday night from Rotorua.

If timber was temporarily short in any district, it was because of distribution difficulties and perhaps because of access troubles.

He knew that some millers were not yet Retting out all the timber they could handle, owing in many cases to road limitations between the cutting areas and the milling sites.

Stocks Held by Merchants

These handicaps were temporary, however, and it should not be long before the timber-supply situation was back to normal. The country had been so short of supplies for so long that merchants who now found it a little harder to place nil their incoming stocks were sldW in adjusting themselves.

It had been pointed out to him that stocks held by merchants throughout New Zealand at a givefi date amounted to some millions of feet; and he had been consulted about disposal of this apparent surplus. He did not regard it as a problem, for prior to the war and the development of especially heavy demands upon the merchants and millers, first for defence buildings and later for housing construction, the yards throughout the Dominion had carried nearly four times as much timber in stock.

Co-operative Mill at Te Whaitl

The Minister mentioned that en route to Gisborne from Rotorua, via Waikaremoana, he had visited at Te Whaiti a milling venture conducted on co-operative lines by a group of returned men with rehabilitation aid.

The project had had its troubles, owing chiefly to a miscalculation on the part of its initiators as to the weights of the logs they would have to handle: but with the Rehabilitation Department’s assistance adjustments had been made which gave the mill full capacity to handle all types and sizes of indigenous timbers, The department had secured milling rights over a considerable area of bush, and had also made provision for future requirements. He anticipated, said Mr. Skinner, that the project would be a complete success with its present set-up, and the men and their families were settling down well to the job. This was one of a number of cooperative projects assisted by the Rehabilitation Department, said Mr. Skinner. Groups of men with bush and milling experience were operating elsewhere and assisting to supply the timber required for current and future housing and general building needs. Impossible to “Take the Lid Off.”

A number of groups of departmenttrained carpenters had also been formed, and these were now working independently on building contracts. While the position in regard to supplies had improved and would improve further, housing continued to be the main pre-occupation of the Government, he said. The back-log of building requirements in the Dominion ran into huge figures, and commercial applications were enormous. It was impossible to “take the lid off’ and abandon control, for if commercial needs were allowed to compete with housing the latter would have a poor chance.