WASTE RUBBER.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 13 April 1922, Page 5

WASTE RUBBER.

DISCOVERY BY NEW ZEALANDER

FORMATION OF. SYNDICATE

(BY TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION ) WELLINGTON, April 12.. The sum of two million pounds has been paid by an American syndicate for the rights over certain secret processes in the manufacture of rubber, which were discovered by a New Zealander and developed in a factory at Miramar. The syndicate believes th© process will revolutionise the rubber industry. The inventor is William Stocks, who was born at Dunedin, but. he did ot live to reap the reward of his successful^ experiments. He died at Wellington last year.

Stocks, who was of a wandering disposition, drifted into the rubber industry, and worked in great factories in Britain and on the Continent of Europe. Me. became an expert in rubber, and came to Melbourne, where he pro'bablv came across the idea for tliQ utilisation of waste rubber, for which he had long been seeking. As the war-time law in Australia forbade the formation of companies of more than £20,000 capital, he came to New Zealand, and the New Zealand .Rubber Products Company was formed, with a capital of £100,000 Messrs H. C. Stoddart and J. Baxter helped m the work of development, and £100 shares were literally hawked about Wellington, but people were sceptical that anything good could come out of New Zealand, so the promoters had to extend their operations to the rest of the Dominion to secure the money required.

Stoddart and Baxter went to England and America, and enlisted the support of r>r S. P. Woodward, a? financial magnate, the presidents of rubber companies, banks, and other business institutions. After demonstrations had been given a conference was arranged and an agreements reached which realised all the objects for which Stoddart and Baxter left New Zealand. These objects were, roughly, to float in the United States a company to acquire the world's rights trom such company, the total consideration to be paid to the owners to be about a million, and half a million in cash, Stoddart to receive one half of the consideration.

The agreement signed provides for the payment to the vendor's of fifteen hundred thousand dollars in cash and twenty-three hundred thousand dollars in shares* from the first company to work the existing plant of the rubber companies, of.which Mr W Toodward is president Subsequently, another company is to be formed, from which the vendors will receive a million dollars in cash and fifty-two hundred thousand dollars m shares

The total amount the fortunate owners of interest in the option of stocks in the. invention will get is ten million joljars. of which two and a half million dollars will be m casrfi and seven and a half million dollars* in shares The agreement provides also for the incorporation of companies in Canada, Engiand, Europe and elsewhere '