WHITE PINE TIMBER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12067, 24 July 1917, Page 7

WHITE PINE TIMBER.

; TRADE WITH AUSTRALIA. POSITION OF MILLERS. A justification for continuing the export of white pine timber to Australia was pleaded at Auckland on Thursday by Mr Stanley Milroy, secretary of the Kauri Timber Company. Discussing the debate on the matter in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, and the contention of Mr V. H. Reed that the. export should not bo prohibited, Mr Milroy explained the position of his own company, and said it was similar to that of other exporters. The Kauri Timber Company, he said, had a forest between Kawakawa and Whangarei, containing about 23,000,00'. feet of white pine. The plant to work this cost £35,000. If white pine were not exported, and' nothing more- done beyond supplying local needs in the north—Auckland butter-box manufacturers obtained their supplies principally from the King Country—it woulu take twenty-five years to work out tin forest. This was unthinkable from a business point of view, soemg that such a costly milling plant had been secured. When the company purchased the forest the time allowed for removing the timber was short, considering the amount of white pine growing, and involved clearing 8,000,000 feet per annum. The growinc of white pme was unremunerative to settlers, and if export were prohibited, the value of the timber would be reduced. Settlers having no profitable market, would then burn the timber off. Mr Milrov said, further, that the outcome of the prohibition cf exportation would be the adoption of a substitute for white pine for making butter The use of this substitute, if it proved satisfactory, would follow in New Zealand, causing tho pino forests of the Dominion to become practically valueless, thus curtailing further financial loss to settlers and to exporters who had entered into large.contracts in Australia. Already substitutes had been discovered, but while there was a large available supply of white pme, butter exporters, both in the Commonwealth and in New Zealand, preferred to uso it for one reason alone—its cheapness.