HUGE PAPER MILL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21583, 30 August 1933, Page 5

HUGE PAPER MILL

ERECTION IN ENGLAND

RESULT OF TARIFF REFORM

FOREIGN MONOPOLY BEATEN

A huge paper mill was opened .it Dartford, Kent, recently, •which, but for tariffs, would have been erected in Italy to i>our its exports into British markets.

The story of Greaseproof Papermills, Dartford, which can turn out yearly 15,000 tons of a paper which has until now been practically a foreign monopoly, is a romance of tariff reform, says the Morning Post. Not two years ago the most up-to-date machine for making greaseproof paper was lying ready in a German factory for transport to Italy, where the Belgian company, "Aneiens Etablissemonts Louis de Naeyer," was setting up a paper mill for supplying the British market. Just before 'the machine was shipped news came that after 30 years of talk Britain was imposing (tariffs, almost in a night. In dismay the company sought an outstanding English paper company. Messrs. Wiggins, Teape and Company. Arrangements were rushed through, a site was found, and the magnificent machine built for Italy was transshipped to England only an hour before the new tariff, which would have mado its import out of the question, became law. Now the two companies, throne!) their subsidiary, Greaseproof Paper Mills, Limited, have built an enormous factory round the machine, equipped from end to end with British papermaking machinery, and with power generators supplied bv the General Electric Company. A few weeks ago the first wood-pulp began the unceasing journey which converts it into greaseproof paper for the needs of housekeepers, farmers, caterers, and, in fact, half the trades of the country. The special pulp arrives in barccs from Belgium, and is i>oundod into slime for eight hours on a Gog and Magog scale before it is ready for the How through purifiers and dyeing vats and drying tanks to the flying cylinders which turn it into paper. Speaking at the inaugural luncheon at the mills, Mr. J. H. Thomas, Secretary for the Dominions, called the new factory "an oikmi munifestation to the world of British pluck, British determination, and British confidence in the future." "1 do not know," Mr. Thomas added, "whether there arc any orthodox free traders present, but much of tiio improved position of the country, and certainly the establishment of this factory, is due to the fact that wc at last realised that it was time that we protected our own interests."