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Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6597, 9 May 1925, Page 6

TREATMENT OF FLAX.

REPORTED NEW PROCESS WILL NOT AFFECT DOMINION INDUSTRY In connection with the cabled message from London on Thursday announcing that Dr. Pratchard, a septuagarian Canadian, had invented a maching whereby the method of retting and scutching flax, which has been unchanged for thousands of years, can be carried out in five or six hours instead of six weeks, thereby eliminating labour and probably making linen as cheap as cotton, a Manawatu Standard reporter saw Mr A. Seifert, the .well-known flax expert, to see what effect, if any, the invention would have on the industry in the Dominion.

Mr Seifert at once pointed out that what is commonly known in New Zealand as flax is not really such, the New Zealand plant being allied to the lily family. The true flax, which the cable referred to, had been grown in the Dominion in small quantities, Mr Seifert himself having grown some for experimental purposes. He mentioned 'that the New Zealand native phormium tenax did not go through the retting process, stripping being employed instead. With the true flax stripping could not be employel, as it would chop the fibre up. Describing the retting process, Mr Seifert stated it consisted of rotting away the stalk of the flax by fermentation, leaving the fibre "intact. Any shortening of the period of retting would therefore not affect the New Zealand industry.