IRONSAND DEPOSITS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23226, 25 June 1937, Page 10

IRONSAND DEPOSITS

HIGH GRADE METAL EXTRACTED ENGLISH COMPANY'S CLAIM INDUSTRY TO BE STARTED AT PATEA (Per United Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 24. 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 the impurities which in the past have prejudiced the development of an industry, are made by the Duffield Iron Corporation, Ltd., of London. It proposed through a subsidiary company, Duffield Iron and Steel (N.Z.), Ltd., to move toward starting an industry at Patea, having already secured the necessary lease and authority 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, as the relative merits of the sand from several localities are still in the process of testing at the 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 export could be developed valued at £1,500,000 per annum, the total labour involved, including consequential auxiliary industries, being estimated at 3500, with a pay roll of £750,000 per annum. , , It is stated that the laboratory tests were started in 1928, and as an outcome of the work a New Zealand subsidiary company was formed for the purpose of acquiring the New Zealand rights of the Duffield process and investigating the 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 a price competitive with that produced by the blast furnace methods, the capital cost of the plant necessary for the Duffield process being only 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, Ltd, reporting on the tests, has 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 the bath of basic slag, only 0.02 per cent, (a quantity considered negligible) being in the iron. 3. The high state of purity of the iron. 4. The economic aspect generally of the procedure. The corporation regards its procedure so far as it has gone—the first test of extracting iron so conspicuously free from all impurities—as extraordinarily successful.