NEW FERTILISER FACTORY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 19 August 1929, Page 9

NEW FERTILISER FACTORY.

TO GOST £2,500,000. AUNT RA LI AN-NEW ZEAL AND CONCERN. SYDNEY, August S. -Groat interest lias been aroused by the publication of -the fact that the Imperial Chemical Industries of Australia and New Zealand, Ltd., contemplated building a fertiliser factory to cost £2,500,000 to make synthetic sulphate and other nitrogenous (products. The announcement was made by Mr, B. E. Todliunter, the company’s’ Australian representative, when he was giving evidence before the Tariff Board which was inquiring into the subject, of fertilisers. The inquiry centres round the question whether fertiliser prices in Australia are fair, and whether duties should be raised. Mr. Todliunter said that the economies of the quest ion depended entirely on output and on the possibility of erecting large plants. An output of at least 100,000 tons annually would bo necessary to enable local manufacturers to supply Australia at anything like world parity prices, after allowing for the protection afforded by freight -and landing charges. Only abouit 20 per cent, of that amount could be supplied by existing producers. A plant involving £2.500,000 would bo necessary. He said that Australia, in common with other countries with large centres of population, was a producer of by-pro-duct ammonia from her gasworks and co-ke ovens. The only outlet at present for this product in the Commonwealth lay in the manufacture of anhydrous ammonia. The balance had to be converted into sulphate, which was. therefore, a forced production.

In New Zealand, he said, his company had been able to attach the nitrogen problem unhampered bv tariff restrictions and assisted by lower distribution costs. It was supplying sulphate to New Zealand farmers at £l2 12s a ton (froin country depots), against an average price of £l7 a ton under similar conditions in Australia, and its estimated consumption of fertiliser in the Dominion for 1929 had already been exceeded. He suggested for Australia a common sales board for all by-product, and imported sulphate. and that application should be made to the board for a rebate on all British imports required in excess of local production. He also suggested that liie by-product makers should receive for a period a price equivalent to the imported landed cost, duty paid, for the time being.

The revelations made by Mr. Todhunter as In the effects of the tariff art' only another instance of how Australia is suffering in this direction, ft L admitted on all hands that the tariff of the needs scientific adjustment, but it is feared by many that the position has drifted right out of hand. New Zealand is often referred >(i as an example to Australia, but there are thousands who refuse to believe that New Zealand goes far enough. These people are just, as convinced that Australia should go further than it does. They are extremists, ami or tariff questions extremists in Australia seem to hold swnv.