SLUMP IN TIN PRICES

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1929, Page 11

SLUMP IN TIN PRICES

STIMULATION OF CONSUMPTION. NEW PROCESS OF SPRAYING. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Dec. 21. The price of tin has fallen in recent months to a point at which it goes below the cost of production. Thia has led to the formation of agreements, pools and associations, the latest being the Tin Producers’ Association, whose fundamental policy is to restrict output and to produce just sufficient to take care of consumption at a higher level of prices. This policy may, and no doubt will, meet with success of a temporary character, but a more effective policy would be to stimulate consumption, and that is likely to follow on recent research. Details of an important programme of research which may lead to the exploitation of entirely new uses and properties of tin were recently announced in London, by the honorary secretary of the'Tin Industrial Applications Committee, a body recently formed in connection with the British Non-ferrous Metals Research Association to investigate the industrial r.dantabiiitv of the metal. The secretary is reported to have said: “Among many lines of research there is a process for spraying metals which the association is examining with interest. It is claimed for the process which we intend testing that our tin can be sprayed successfully on to any surface from steel or glass to wool or silk. Our first concern will be to verify the results of recent experiments that go'to show that pure Lin sprayed by the process upon a metal structure renders it proof against corrosion. Since it has been stated that corrosion costs the heavy Industries £500,000,000 a year the-matter is deserving of careful consideration.

“This method of spraying tin might open up a new era in the manufacture of decorated fabrics for women's clothes and furnishings. Tin could be sprayed upon materials as delicate as silk, which afterwards, it is claimed, could be crumpled and washed without damaging the fabric or the metal design. Tin sprayed upon glass would make cheap and satisfactory reflectors and possibly mirrors, while novel effects in interior decoration could be obtained. Then there would be a wide use in tinspraying the interior of tanks and receptacles used in the manufacture of food. 1( is the business of the Applications Committee to examine any new process which they consider of commercial interest.”