Ironworks For Taranaki

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 149, 25 June 1937, Page 4

Ironworks For Taranaki

New Process of Extraction From Sand > LEASE OBTAINED AT PATEA. • MAY EMPLOY 3500 WITH PAYROLL OF £750,000. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, Last Night. Claims that it has succeeded in producing economically by its own processes after some years of investigation a high grade iron from New Zealand titaniferous ironsands, practically free from those impurities which in the past have prejudiced the development of an industry, are made by the Duffield Iron Corporation, Ltd., of London. It proposes through a subsidiary company, Duffield Iron and Steel (N.Z.), Limited, to move toward starting an industry at Patea, having already secured tho necessary lease and atfA.oiity to take sand from the Patea Harbour Board which would produce 25,000 tons of quality ingots a year for export. Plans for eventual extension involve the establishment of similar works near New Plymouth and also at a site not yet disclosed, the relative morits of the sand from several localities still being in a process 0 f testing at tho corporation’s works and laboratories in England. The nominal capital proposed in the Patea scheme is £200,000, of which Duffield Iron and .Steel (N.Z.) would take half. Under a comprehensive scheme it is claimed that an export trade could be developed valued at £1,500,000 per annum, the total labour involved, including consequential auxiliary industries, being estimated at 3500 with a payroll of £750,000 per annum. It is stated that laboratory tests were started in 1928 as an outcome of which the New Zealand subsidiary company was formed. The purpose of the subsidiary was to acquire the New Zealand rights of the Duffield process and te investigate tho possibilities of its development in New Zealand, particularly in respect of ironsand deposits, Several shipments of ironsand were forwarded to England from New Plymouth and Patea for experimental purposes. The proprietors of the process were confident at the outset, it is further stated, of being able to produce from the sand very efficiently and economically a good average grade of iron at & competitive price with that produced by blast furnace methods, the capital cost of the plant necessary for the Duffield process being ouly a fraction of the cost necessary in the case of other processes to produce a given quantity of iron. The results have now given a very much higher standard of iron than was anticipated. The Duffield Iron Corporation, Limited, iu reporting on the tests, lias made the following comments: (1) The extraordinary rapidity (20 minutes) with which the magnetic oxides in the sand were reduced to a semi-molten state; (2) the gratifying features that almost all the titanium oxide joined tho bath of basic slag, only 0.02 per cent, (that quantity being considered negligible) being in the iron; (3) the high state of purity of the iron; (4) the economic aspect generally of the * ocedure. The corporation regards its procedure so far as it has gone as an extraordinarily successful first test of extracting iron so conspicuously free from all impurities.