OUR CEMENT RESOURCES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 23, 21 July 1911, Page 7

OUR CEMENT RESOURCES.

THEJR EXTENT INDICATED. Auckland, July 17. It is well known that cement works are established and flourish at Maliurangi and at Limestone Island, hut Mr. Harrison, of Whangarei, who was interviewed here, considers that they but suggest the beginning of an enormous industry. Between Whangarei and the Bay of Islands, he said, there is a huge belt of limestone close to the sea, traversed by the railway, and representing an inexhaustible supply. It is almost natural cement, needing only burning with the coal which is found in the neighborhood, and asking only some adjustment of the ingredients to be made almost perfect. The ''hydraulic limestone" lies along with a white limestone, which is all that is required for the artifice that makes the best mixture possible.

Mr. Harrison, in discussing the question, referred to a statement in Professor James Parks' recent work on the geology of New Zealand, in which it is stated that concrete is the building material of the future, and New Zealand, with its enormous deposits of limestone and clays in juxtaposition, its water power and coal, its long seaboard and harbors, is destined to become the centre of cement manufacture for the South Pacific.

"The increase in the use of cement (he states) is phenomenal. In 1902 the quantity used in the United States was 8,000,000 barrels. Last year he had been told that it was nearly 100,000,000 barrels, The cement works, now in operation in North Auckland, and drawing on some of the very best raw materials in the world, were not able to meet the demand upon them." New factories, he believed, were shortly to be! established, and he foresaw immense possibilities in the industry. It would give employment to many men, and it was unlike goldmining, in that the visible supply was practically inexhaustible.