Outlook For Kauri Gum

Northern Advocate, 30 August 1948, Page 4

Outlook For Kauri Gum

The great wealth which the kauri gum industry has brought to Northland makes unpleasant a suggestion that the end of the industry is at hand.

It is estimated that exports of kauri gum have been worth at least £3O millions sterling, and, because of the primitive methods of gathering the gum during the greater portion of the past century, it has provided occupation for a large army of individual diggers, and, at the same time constituted a valuable sideline for pioneers breaking in farm lands. More recent years have witnessed the employment of machinery that has been used mainly to deal with gum remnants left by men who depended upon spear and spade. The high place occupied by kauri gum as a base of paints and many other commodities has long been recognised, and, because gum exported was always despatched in good condition, it commanded lucrative prices, which, however, were

subject to severe reductions when world conditions were depressed.

Apparently the price of gum is now so low that the industry is regarded as uneconomic. Though the substitution of synthetic substances for kauri gum may have had serious consequences for the New Zealand industry, it is possible that the desire for quantity rather than quality’in war years induced some exporters to send to overseas markets- gum which was not of the best grade and which had not been properly prepared.

Attempted short-cuts to profit have evidently had boomerang effect, as is invariably the result of such policy. This should have salutary effect upon the Dominion’s primary industries, which, desiring a valuable and continuing overseas market for their products, must spare no effort to keep the standard at ( high level and to raise it wherever possible.