NITRATES FROM AIR

Waipa Post, Volume 38, Issue 2269, 16 February 1929, Page 5

NITRATES FROM AIR

THE SOUNDS SCHEME.

GOVERNMENT SANCTION REFUSED. Disappointed mildly expresses the feeling of the directors of New Zealand Sounds Hydro-electric Concessions, Ltd. (says the Wellington correspondent of the Lyttelton Times). They are disappointed with the Government’s attitude towards a scheme for the extraction of nitrates from the air and the manufacture of aluminium under cheaper and better conditions, they claim, than are possible anywhere else in the world. Mr A. Leigh Hunt, managing director of the company, in a statement to the Evening- Post, said: — “Here was a proposal which meant a saving of £90,000,000 to the producers of this country. It has been turned down. It meant the employment of 500 men on tunnel work and ultimately of 2000 men. It has been turned down. It represented rentals from vj/ater now running to waste worth £IO,OOO to the Government. It meant an income tax from the company to operate the works of over £300,000.” Mr Hunt explained that the company had been successful in securing the financial support of a London group prepared to invest £6,500,000 in the establishment of great hydroelectric works at Deep Cove, Doubtful Sound. The power was to be derived from Lake Manapouri, the .water being brought to the work site in the Sound by a tunnel six miles long, and from waters in the immediate vicinity of the works site. The enterprise was emphatically of Imperial importance, and was Imperial in character. It was estimated that the nitrate requirements of New Zealand in 15 years would be 500,000 tons per annum. This could all be made in the Dominion, and would be made at the proposed woi’ks.. Sir Douglas Mawson in August last cabled that a substantial firm of underwriters in London would provide the £6,500,000 required, and would advance it to the company to be established provided the Government advanced to the company a sum sufficient to ensure payment of 5 per cent, interest to shareholders during five years, the period of construction, such advance not to exceed in the aggregate £700,000 secured over the whole undertaking and repayable by the company in six and a-half and at most seven years.

The security, continued Mr Hunt, would be £lO for every £1 advanced, but the chief advantage to the Dominion would have been that the farmers of New Zealand would have had at their doors supplies of fertilisers, the price of which was not to exceed the wholesale f.b.o. price at any port in the world. The company gave an undertaking to that effect, and at no time during the 60 years’ currency of the license would that price have been exceeded. This concession would represent to farmers a saving of £3 per ton on the official estimate of requirements, and over a period .of 60 years this would represent a direct saving of £90,000,000. “The proposal was brought before Mr Coates,” said Mr Hunt, “but a general election was then pending, and fitting attention could not be given to it. It has been brought before the present Government, but the company has been officially informed that the Government is unable to entertain the proposal. We have now instructed Sir Douglas as commissioner in London, to proceed with the flotation of the company upon other lines.”