Popular Electricity

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 10, 13 January 1936, Page 10

Popular Electricity

RAPID STRIDES IN SWEDEN. The amazing growth in the use of electricity in Sweden was described at Auckland by Mr. J. E. Edstrom, chairman of, directors of the firm which supplied the equipment for the Arapuni power station. Mr. Edstrom, who arrived by the Aorangi, accompanied by his wife, is a vice-president of the International Chamber of Commerce, Paris, and has recently concluded an official mission to further trade relations between Sweden and South Africa.

“We have to thank the Great War for giving electrical power development a great impetus,” Mr. Edstrom said. “Sweden was cut off from supplies of oil and petrol, and was thrown on to its own resources, bringiug hydroelectric power into prominence. The country is rich in waterfalls and to-day every village, even in the deepest forest, is equipped with electricity. Its use on the farm is highly developed for threshing, dairy production, fodder conservation and even heating the barns in which animals, owing to the five months or more of winter, have to be housed. Altogether, Sweden is the

most highly electrified country in tho world. ’ ’

Owing to its remoteness from the factory where its equipment was produced, Arapuni had a special interest for him, Mr Edstrom stated, and he was making it his first objective in New Zealand. His country had sent heavy electrical machinery to almost every country in the world, but Arapuni was unique in being at the antipodes of the place of origin of its equipment. The trade delegation of which Mr. Edstrom had been chairman in South Africa had made a special investigation into the prospects for an interchange of typical South African products, with wood pulp and paper and machinery. A similar campaign in Australia had been successful. Sweden had no colonies, and so was dependent on foreign countries for many of her essential commodities and raw materials.

“We cannot produce fruit and wool us can countries in the Southern Hemisphere,” Air. Edstrom said, “but we can export fine wood products and machinery.”