AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23882, 9 August 1939, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRIES

" SELF-CONTAINED " DRIVE STIMULUS OF DEFENCE PROGRAMME (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY. July 21. During the last year the " self-con-tained" drive for Australian manufacturing industry has been pushed forwar&jvith remarkable sneed under the stimulus of international tension. The programme for greatlv increased defence expenditure has been largely responsible for a rapid expansion in Australian industries. New manufacturing industries are being established and existing industries extended. The Tariff Board, commenting on this trend, nointed out that, by reducing its dependence on exports. Australia could become better able to withstand the effects of falling prices of farm products exported by Australia. In the last 10 years factories have increased by 3000 to 26.000. the number of employees by 80,000 to 530.000. the value addjed in manufacture by £12.000.000 to £180,000.000. and the total value of output bv £40.000.000 to £460.000,000. Expansion in industry has been progressive since the economic depression, although the "self-contained" drive now in progress is a more recent phenomenon. Depression conditions.in many factories were met by an increase in efficiency, and later the restriction of certain imports gave greater scope to Australian industrial enterprise. The policy of diverting trade to "good-customer" countries—a policy in operation for about two ■"• ears—also helped Australian manufacturers while it was in operation. The defence programme entailing large expenditure of revenue and loan money, is conferring on Australian manuiacturers much greater opportunities for expansion than tariff restrictions and the like. Industries costing millions of pounds to establish have been, or are being, begun in all of the six States. This duplicates the experiences during the World War of 1914-18. when it became necessary fo" Australia to supply many of her own manufactured needs, because of the diminution of shipping, leading to the necessity.in the post-war period to keep those industries going by means of tariff and other restrictions. ■ , • Imperial Chemical Industries of Australia is establishing works in South Australia to produce soda, soda ash. nitric, and synthetic ammonia. Plant for these factories is to cost £1,650,000. Metal productions are expanding in both output and variety. Canadian, English, and Australian investors have formed a £1,000,000 company to roll and extrude aluminium at a Sydney factory. The gigantic steel-making concern, Broken Hill Proprietary. Ltd., has decided to install blast furnaces costing £1,500,000 at its South Australian works, and has already opened a new blast furnace at its Port Kembla (New South Wales) works. Expansion at the main 'B.H.P. production unit at Newcastle (New South Wales) is continuous. The B.H.P. also has proposals for the establishment of tinplate works in South Australia, costing the company £2,500,000, and the South Australian Government, in indirect works, £1,500,000. At present Australia imports all its tinplate. and the output of the B.H.P. works would displace imports valued at £2,500,000 a year. Perhaps the greatest single influence on Australian industrial expansion at present is the activities in aircraft production for defence needs. This production is organised in two ways—by means of three operating or proposed company-owned factories and of a Government mass-production scheme, which, with the financial help of the Brjtish • Government, is linking up State-owned railroad workshops for the manufacture of aircraft parts. Of the three company-owned factories, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation of Melbourne is already producing Wirraways, a trainer-fighter type based on the American NA33 machine. The first four of the Wirraways are already being used by the Royal Australian Air Force, and the remainder of the 150 ordered by the Commonwealth Government will be completed in a year. The De Havilland Company is building light planes at a Sydney factory, importing only the engines from England. The Clyde Engineering Company of Sydney has linked up with British factories for the manufacture of aeroplanes here. The cost of establishing these three concerns has been estimated at £7,000,000. The Commonwealth mass-production scheme aims at supplying not only Australia's needs for military aircraft, but also those of New Zealand, South Africa, and other British possessions in Asia and at Singapore. The railroad workshops in each State and selected private manufacturers will make component parts which will be assembled in new plants in Sydney and Melbourne. The naval and military services are also adding their quota to industrial expansion. In Government-owned and private factories and dockyards, two destroyer.', 12 torpedo boats, several other small naval vessels, guns, rifles, and other light armaments and munitions are being produced in increasingly large quantities.