PORT OF MANCHESTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19737, 13 March 1926, Page 9

PORT OF MANCHESTER

OPPORTUNITIES FOR TRADE. MARKET FOR NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE. ADDRESS BY CAPTAIN WADE. Captain Win. J. Wade, representative of the Manchester Ship Canal Company in Australia and New Zealand, with headquarters at Sydney, pave an illustrated lecture in the Kinema Theatre at the Exhibition last night on the xiosslbilities of trade between New Zealand and Manchester. Captain Wade is actively engaged in connection with the development of direct trade to and from Australia. New Zealand, and Manchester, the great inland port in the heart of one of the most densely populated industrial areas in the world, and which offers an almost unlimited field for the distribution and consumption of primary products of all hinds. Manchester, which 30 years ago was an inland town, is now the fourth largest port in the United Kingdom. It is the centre of the world’s greatest industrial and most ■densely populated area. Within 25 miles of the centre of the cit& there are 4,000,000 people; within a radius of 50 miies there are 10,000.000; and within a radius of 75 miles there arc 14,000,000 people, which is 1,000,000 more than there are within a similar radius of London. Manchester is one of the world's greatest distributing centres. There was a large attendance, ana Captain Wade’s remarks were listened to with keen interest. , Captain Wade recounted the history oi the Manchester Ship Canal, which, he said, could float steamers up to 15,000 tons agister. It had a minimumdepth of -nit, and in Manchester there were docks 400 acres in extent. The canal and docks were fed by 85 miles of railway owned by the Manchester Ship Canal Co., and the clocks were the most efficiently appointed in the United Kingdom. . , Forty years ago, said Captain Wade, Manchester was in danger of becoming derelict. and shops and houses were unused. The rateable value of the city was decreasing alarmingly, and the outlook was very gloomy. The reason for this was that the cutlet and inlet for Manchester was Liverpool, through which all Mb trade had to pass, and the port authorities and railway companies of Liverpool had placed a stranglehold on the progress of Manches ter They extorted taxes to the limit of forbearance on all goods passing through, until at length they passed the limit or human endurance, and there was the i - evitable revolt. Manchester was made its own port, despite the bitter ami powerful opposition of vested interests, and its pr cress had been wonderful ever since. lb© idea of putting a canal through from the Mersey Rivet (on which Liverpool was built) to Manchester was no new idea, but it had never hitherto been, considered to bo practical. The foresight and public spirit of one man, a Manchester citizen named Daniel Adamson, however, led the idea not only to the realm of practicability, but to achievement in actual fact. This was not done without a very great deal of trouble. There wore tremendous engineering difficulties to overcome, and the sanction of Parliament to be obtained. It took four years of strenuous effort to secure parliamentary authority, and even then the conditions were so stringent that it was a doubtful victory. Seven million pounds were required to finance the proposal, and Parliament decreed that £6CO,uJO of this should be in hand in hard cash by a certain date before the final authority was given—-a condition with which compliance seemed impossible. The citizens of Manchester, however, were not, to bo scared bv the conditions of Parliaments, and other means means failing, they made the project a popular one throughout the whole of the district. In every mill, m every factory, and every shop people put_ their weekly savings away to buy shares in the company, with the result that one day before the due date the £600,000 was in hand, and the scheme went on. As (o the engineering difficulties encountered. in the first place Manchester was 70ft above sea level. ‘‘Engineers, said a leading newspaper of Liverpool, which was, naturally, bitterly opposed to Manchester being its own port, “can do many strange things, hut they cannot make water run uphill.” They managed, however, to achieve even that task, with the result that io-clay some of the leading brokers of Liverpool were forsaking that city for Manchester in order to carry on business. So had, indeed, was Liverpool s treatment of Manchester at that date that The Times likened the Liverpool Port Authority to a hand of medieval barons extorting dues from the industrial area. Making wafer run uphill was only one of the difficulties io be faced. There were railways crossing the site of the canal and other canals on different levels. To overcome these difficulties the railroads had to bo raised 80ft and more, necessitating the construction of embankments miles long. Dealing with the markets of Manchester, and its advantages ns a distributing centre Captain Wade mentioned that whereas 40 years ago the city was in danger of becoming derelict, its docks now handled annually 6,000,000 tons of commerce, and its animal bank cleavings and financial turnover were greater than those of Birmingham, Hull, Liverpool, and Newcastle-on-Tyne combined. . In 1923-4 the increase In tonnage dealt with was over 1,000,000, as compared with the previous vear. One had only to look at a map of England to see that Manchester was the heart of its greatest manufacturing area—Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Bolton, Bradford, Leicester, Nottingham, Huddersfield, Stockport, Stafford, Stoke, and a host of other manufacturing cities were nearer to Manchester than to any other port. What a great, market lay at Manchester a door 1 ihe nearer produce was landed to its market the lower would be the cost of distribution, and so the greater would be the profit to the exporter. Canada, the United States, Mediterranean countries, Argentina, Bi a/Jl, and many other countries ban been quick to realise this, hut to their own loss Tasmania, the Australian mainland, and New Zealand had as yet not done so. For three generations London had had a virtual monopoly of their trade. That was all very well so far as the markets were concerned which Loudon could best serve, but there were other and even larger markets which could be much mors efllcientlv served trom other places. Fit instance, there was the groat maiket of Lancashire, Cheshire. West Yorkshire, and tlie Midlands, which could he served with much greater efficiency from Manchester than from London. Vast quantities of butter, frozen meat, and imported fruit were consumed there annually. He did not remember seeing New Zealand butter sold as such in Manchester. Nearly all the butter going to the North of England was blended. Now was the time, and Manchester the means, to turn to great advantage the publicity given by the Wembley Exhibition and the shopping weeks. He hoped that such opportunity would he taken advantage of. It was unnecessary, added Captain Wade, to explain that by shipping direct to Manchester transhipment charges and deterioration by double, treble, and quadruple handling could be avoided. Transport ami handling charges all worked back to the shipper and the grower. The only charges to be met in addition to freight direct to Manchester were the costs of hauling from the quay-side warehouses to the shops in the city and surrounding area, whereas from London railread charges had to be met and very large handling costs. It was estimated recently that about £317,000 per annum was expended in transport charges on frozen im at consumed in the Greater Manchester area, but shipped via Loudon and Liverpool. The film, which was most interesting, showed huge heavily-laden liners being towed up the canal to Manchester, passing through the locks, under bridges, and discharging all and every kind of cargo in the Manchester docks. Judging by the film, the docks of manchester must be perfect models of efficiency and speed. Electiic cranes, worked hy a man standing oier the hatch aboard the ships, discharge and load everything, so that nothing can be damaged by careless handling. Bulk grain can be discharged direct to a silo a mile away at the same time as general cargo, and many other wonderful things me done every day. The long lines of big steamers look like big squat topmasts tied up to quays with their topmasts struck, and the tops of their fiumajs lowered. ■ v w