BRITISH DYES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4402, 14 March 1941, Page 3

BRITISH DYES

“VERY SUBSTANTIAL” OUTPUT. SERVING HALF THE WORLD. Month by month British dyestuffs are approaching a production of 125,000 tons, or half the world supply. Exports to industrial undertakings hitherto dependent upon Germany, France and Italy are progressively increasing. In war time actual figures are forbidden, but the increase is officially stated to be “very substantial indeed.”

Any exportable surplus at all would have been an achievement. In 1914 Britain produced only about onetenth of the dyes she used; last year she made four-fifths of the £6,000,000 worth needed for the home market. In normal times Germany, France and Italy supply between them 39.8 per cent, of a world production estimated at 250,000 tons, the United Kingdom’s share being 11 per cent. British dyestuffs manufacturers are now producing, under license, chemical products hitherto exclusively prepared in Germany, among them certain specialised dyestuffs. Since this step was taken, the entry of Italy into the war has blocked the exportation of Italian dyestuffs, and of German dyestuffs ostensibly of Italian origin but actually made by companies associated with Germany and using German patents and technical assistance. There are now other openings in the colonial markets of Holland, Belgium and France and Switzerland also is, for the time, no longer a competitor in the overseas markets.

The United States (21 per cent, of total production), Russia (11 per cent.) and Japan (8 per cent.) remain. Of these the United States requires most of her production for her own use, Russia is probably supplying Germany and her other neighbours, while Japan is interested largely in the cheaper grades. There, therefore, lies open to Great Britain to-day a market for one-half of the world’s finished dyestuffs, and, while first meeting her own war needs, she is now turning her attention to it in earnest and with growing success.