CENTENNIAL FAIR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26473, 29 May 1947, Page 8

CENTENNIAL FAIR

MANUFACTURERS’ EFFORT

PLANS FOR INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION

“ Many inquiries have been received from citizens and members of the business community concerning the intention of the Manufacturers’ Association to hold a centennial industry fair,” said Mr F. L. Hitchens, secretary of the Otago-Southland Manufacturers’ Association, to the Daily Times yesterday. “ This has been a long-planned project of the association’s Publicity Committee, and, although the arrangements for holding the fair in the early stages of the centennial celebrations have had to be abandoned because suitable premises would not be available, plans are going steadily forward for holding one of the most outstanding industrial exhibitions ever arranged in the city.” A new feature will probably be the amalgamation of whole groups of industry to present instructive and entertaining courts. At a meeting of the Invercargill branch of the Manufacturers’ Association last week the Southland manufacturers expressed themselves as being keenly interested in the fair, and they propose to erect a court which is expected to surpass by far their 1944 effort. The Manufacturers’ Association has already taken steps to ensure that the fair will present a spectacle which will be long remembered, and in order to widen the experience and knowledge of its secretary-organiser Mr Hitchens was recently sent to Australia, where he had ample opportunity to study the British Empire Exhibition and the Royal Agricultural Show m Sydney. Mr Hitchens said that some of the most outstanding exhibits at the Easter show in Sydney would be suitable, with certain adaptations, for the centennial fair, and arrangements might be made to incorporate . some of the main ideas in the effort in Dunedin.