£5,000,000 INVOLVED

Taranaki Daily News, 16 March 1928, Page 12

£5,000,000 INVOLVED

IN HUGE AUSTRALIAN MERGER. A huge merger of Australian and British steel manufacturing firms—one of the largest and most extensive financial moves in Australian manufacturing circles, has been announced by the Minister of Trade and Customs, Mr. Fratten. It is to be known as Australian Iron and Steel, Limited, and has been formed with a nominal capital of £5,000,000, to take over the whole of the undertakings of Hoskins’ Iron and Steel Company, the Australian business of Dorman Long and Company, Baldwin's, Limited, and Howard Smith, Limited. All these firms are prominently associated with the steel business in Australia, particularly New South Wales. The Minister announced that the development was the direct outcome of the tariff introduced and passed through the House of Representatives last December. It would result in the establish-

ment of an iron and steel industry at Port Kcmbla, where a site had been chosen originally by the late Mr. Charles Hoskins, founder of the firm of Hoskins’, Limited. Some idea of the effect on Australia of the merger is gained by a study of the result of £5,000,000 capital invested. In Australian manufacture generally £462 of capital invested in land, buildings, plant and machinery employes one person, so that the £5,000,000 spells certain employment to 10,000. Metal works and machinery in Australia capitalised at £36,000,000 at present pay annually £22,000,000 in wages, and the new merger implies the payment of £3,000,000 annually in wages to Australian workmen. Port Kembla, where the proposed works are to be, possesses outstanding geographical advantages for the economical assembly and conversion of raw materials used in the production of iron and steel, and in the distribution of the finished products. A new blast furnace will be completed there in June, and immediate!-’ there will be commenced the erection of steel furnaces, electric power units, engineering shops and rolling mills, inclusive of electrically-driven rolling mills which will make the plant the most up to date in the British Empire. In addition, a plant will be established for the manufacture of centrifugallyspun cast iron pipes under a special patented process, while the structural steel engineering and fabricating business of Dorman Long and Company, successfully established here when the contract for the Sydney Harbour Bridge contract was obtained, -will be taken over by the new company.