BRIGHT PROSPECTS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18879, 3 December 1935, Page 7

BRIGHT PROSPECTS

INDUSTRY IN BRITAIN SHIPBUILDING ACTIVITY STEEL TRADE STIMULUS LONDON, Nov. 9. Prosperity is returning to some of 1 hemost distressed areas in Britain. Northern shipyards, which have been .silent, are clanging with new activity. Blast furnaces, long damped down, are roaring again. Steel workers are on overtime. Orders worth millions have been placed, and work will be provided for thousands for the next two years and more. What promises to be the busiest shipbuilding period sinco the war has already begun. The areas which will share in the boom are Clydeside, the Tyne and the North-east, Barrow, Birkenhead, and Belfast, while Sheffield's iron and steel industries also reap the benefit. Orders worth half a million pounds have been placed with British firms by Yugoslavia and more are to follow. TYNESIDE BOOM Here are the facts of the big industrial revival, which promises to make 1936 a boom year for some of the longdistressed areas in the north : —Every -shipyard on the River Wear has had more orders this year than for several years and contracts are still beingi secured. One Sunderland yard which has been closed for several, years has been reopened. Messrs. Doxford and Son, of Pallion, who make a special type of motorvessel, are working at full pressure and they have sufficient contracts in hand to keep them busy for several months. Messrs. S.. P. Austin and Sons, who build colliers, have several orders to complete, and the Sunderland works of the North-Eastern Marine Engineering Company will he. fully employed well into next year.

Another indication of the shipping revival is the fact that only five vessels are lying up in the River Wear, compared with 46 in October,. 1932, 31 in 1933, and 11 last year. NAVAL ORDERS The placing of the £2,000,000 Admiralty contract for a cruiser with Messrs. Hawthorn, Leslie and Company, Limited, Hebburn-on-Tyne, has given Tyneside trade a definite stimulus. Other naval work on the river includes the construction of two 9000-ton cruisers and two 1400-ton destroyers by Messrs. Viekers Armstrong. Messrs. Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson have two 1400-ton destroyers on the stocks at Wallsend.

The Royal Ark, the aircraft-carrier to bo constructed by Messrs. Cammell, Laird and Company, at Birkenhead, is expected to find work for at least 2000 men for two to two and a-half years. It will be the longest ship ever launched in the Mersey.

Another order received at Birkenhead is for a 24,000-ton steamer for the Blue Star Line. It will be a motorship with refrigerators, similar in construction to the Dunedin Star. ORDERS FOR BARROW

Messrs. Viekers Armstrong, Limited, have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on improving plant at the naval construction works. Barrow has fared belter' for this reason than most shipbuilding oantres throughout the long depression in the industry. Two 24,000lon liners have been completed there and are now in service.

A large mail and passenger liner for the Union Company of New Zealand, a British submarine and two submarines for Estonia are on the stocks at the anient, and there aro orders in hand for a cruiser for the Argentine Government and a 24,000-ton liner for the Orient Steam Navigation Company. News has been received in Glasgow of the placing! of an order for a Southampton class cruiser with the, Fairfield Shipbuilding Company, Limited, of Govan. More than 20CO Govan men will be employed on it. A destroyer was launched from the same yard recently and another is on the stocks. CLYDE CONTRACTS

The Yugoslav Government has placed an order worth half a million with Messrs. Yarrow and Company lor the construction of boilers and machinery for three destroyers. It is stated that further similar orders will be placed on the Clyde shortly.

Resulting from all this there is great activity in the Sheffield steel industry, and the. output is probably greater than ever before, although the materials aro different from those in pre-war days.

With the added demands from the motor industry and aircraft interests work is.going ahead at full pressure in practically every factory. Blast furnaces arc busy and plants have been improved and extended.