SAWMILLING INDUSTRY

Southland Times, Issue 19395, 8 November 1924, Page 5

SAWMILLING INDUSTRY

MILL MANAGER INTERVIEWED WORK AT PORT CRAIG , EFFECT OF NEW AGREEMENT. The sawmill workers’ award simply fixes a basis. The majority of mill-workers get more than the award rates. It is a case of the supply not being equal to the demand, hence high wages have to be paid,” said Mr Peter Daly to a Southland Times reporter who interviewed him last night. Mr Daly has been attending the recent sitting of the Conciliation Council in an advisory capacity, respecting the special conditions at his mill, which have been the subject of new provisions in the award, which will come into force on December 1 as a result of the agreement of the contestant parties. The Pacific benches used in the Port Craig mill are altogether different from those used in other Southland sawmills. Of one of these benches a Y ankee is reported to have said that “whizzed around so goldarned fast that it took two guys to see it.” Following on the initial installation by an American contractor, the mill, continued Mr Daly, had been altered to suit New Zealand conditions. Two New Zealand breast-benches had been added to the mill’s equipment, and there is yet another to go in, which will bring the mill’s capacity up to 30,000 feet per day. A BIG OUTPUT. At- the present time the bush workers at Port Craig are five miles out from the mill, this rapid extension being due, Mr Daly went on, to the amount of timber that is being taken out of the bush in this part of the country. He supposed that this time next year they would be ten miles out. The present output of the mill is 400,000 ft a month, but Mr Daly is hoping to double that shortly. Another mill is in readiness to start, and when the viaduct which spans the Peter Burn is completed, is is expected that the output will be in the vicinity of 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 feet of timber per year. “We have the equipment to deal with this amount,” said Mr Daly, “and this viaduct is the only thing that is holding us up at present.” Port Craig is visited by six boats per month, the Kotare making two trips in this period and the Oreti four. Occasionally there is a boat from Auckland. Five Union Company boats have loaded timber at the port to date, and all have made very successful trips. “When I went there first,” said Mr Daly, “the difficulty was to get the timber away, but the position in this respect is all right now. and there are very few days in the year that the boats can’t be loaded. We are in a snug corner, and there are not half a dozen days in the twelve months that you couldn’t go out from the wharf in an open boat.” A DIFFICULT UNDERTAKING Referring to criticism that had been made, Mr Daly said that the directors had never had the credit they deserved for the undertaking they had taken on. The tramway construction was comparable to putting down a Government railway, a good illustration being the viaduct which is at preI sent under construction at a cost running into thousands of pounds. It is a threedecker, seven chains long, and 116 feet high at the deepest part of the gorge. There were unforeseen difficulties in the way of rock cuttings, etc., that had to be faced. The directors, however, would have their reward in the long life that was assured for the mill. Referring to complaints about the high freight rate from Bluff and Invercargill to the Port, Mr Daly said that high labour charges did not enable cargo to be carried cheaply. On account of the boats generally leaving Invercargill in the day-time so as to work the bar, it meant that they generally arrived at night, and the shipments of timber had to be handled at overtime rates. Dealing with the cost of living at Port Craig, Mr Daly said that one man and his wife had saved £BOO in four years. To be quite correct, the wife had been keeping a few boarders, but still it illustrated what could be done by those inclined to be saving. They did welt The company was trying to sell stores as cheaply as it could, and was certainly not making any profit on running the store. HANDLING METHODS. “The timber at Port Craig,” said Mr Daly, touching on another aspect of his subject, “is handled very differently from any other mill in Southland. In fact, the mill itself is worked very differently, and when the timber leaves the mill it is carried on a set of transfer chains 200 feet down the cliff on which the mill is situated to the wharf, and there sorted and stacked up in thousand feet tiers, tallied, and branded. After that it is only handled in bulk until it is stored in the ship’s hold. The appliances at the Port can handle it at the rate of 20,000 feet per hour, if the ships could take it at that rate, but it is too fast for them. The demand for timber at the present time is brisk,” concluded Mr Daly in answer to a final question by the reporter.