POST-WAR PLANS FOR INDUSTRY

Southland Times, Issue 24596, 19 November 1941, Page 6

POST-WAR PLANS FOR INDUSTRY

Government Proposals

Outlined

(P.A.) AUCKLAND, November 18. Plans for post-war industrial development in New Zealand were discussed by the Minister of Industries and Commerce, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, in opening the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation conference at Wairakei tonight. He said that industrial development loomed large in the Government’s rehabilitation programme for the Dominion. “We are already preparing for the glad day of peace by taking what steps are possible for the change-over, from war economy to peace economy,” the Minister said. “Plans are being framed and activities for rehabilitation considered. Production has been increased greatly, particularly in essentials for war. I am sure that in the new economy, or in whatevei’ situation arises from the war, New Zealand will maintain her industrial status and will increase it.”

Among the activities being considered and planned, he said, were those to replenish the depleted stocks of civilian consumer goods and to meet the intensified demand that would arise tc ensure an adequacy of supplies of essential raw materials to develop natural resources. Further, it was proposed to extend activity in linen-flax, sugar-beet and flax textiles from phormium tenax, to establish an iron and steel industry and to build ships for coastwise trade and trawlers instead of mine-sweepers, as at present. Other plans were for the development of new uses for New Zealand products, increased cultivation of tobacco, extended manufacture of paper, the production of cellulose products from the Dominion’s forests and the adaptation of engineering advances from munitions to other avenues of production.