A NEW INDUSTRY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24135, 29 November 1941, Page 10

A NEW INDUSTRY

The official opening of the new mills of New Zealand Forest Products, Limited, at Penrose, is an event of importance. The company controls 175,000 acres of trees and their effective use should enlarge employment in the Dominion, create | another industry and, it is hoped, furnish products for export. Of particular significance is the statement of the company's chairman of directors, that the plant being opened should provide for all New _ Zealand's needs in insulating building board. Such insulating board has been used for both internal and external purposes and the Public Works Department has employed the board in constructing military huts. Here is a very wide scope for a New Zealand product. In the past insulating board has come from Sweden and Canada. Its import from Sweden is no longer possible and high freights, shipping difficulties and kindred war problems naturally wiilitate against the use of the Canadian product. At the present time it is particularly necessary that the Dominion's own industries should supply as much as possible of our wants—a development of even greater importance if the war should spread in earnest to the Pacific. In any enlightened post-war policy New Zealand must, avoid uneconomic local industries. But providing a sound labour policy is followed, the timber industry, a natural part of our economy, should have nothing to fear in this respect. The new mills at Peni-ose are a hopeful augury of the Dominion's future expansion.