The Waikato Times SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1941 STEEL AS WELL AS MEN

Waikato Times, Volume 128, Issue 21417, 10 May 1941, Page 8

The Waikato Times SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1941 STEEL AS WELL AS MEN

Within two months the Government hopes be producing pig iron from the Onekaka works. The work of reconditioning the plant, which has remained idle for some years, is progressing rapidly. There is strong hope that the works will be able to supply a large part of New Zealand’s pig iron and steel requirements when the plant has been fully developed. It is unfortunate that this plant was not put into operation, if only as an experiment, some years ago, when the Government was toying with a scheme that was to cost £5,000,000. Happily that mistake was avoided, largely because it was discovered in time that the amount of ore available was not nearly as great as was previously supposed.

There is no question that New Zealand requires an assured additional supply of pig iron and steel. If the armaments industry is to develop more quickly, many grades of iron and steel are among the first necessities. Some of these at least should be obtained from Onekaka. It is understood that finer grades can be produced by the use of a proportion of Taranaki ironsand mixed with the Onekaka ores. Given a supply of suitable raw materials, is there any reason why the manufacture of some of the implements of war should not be greatly expedited while the war lasts, or why peacetime needs should not be met when the war has ended ? Tanks, guns, armour-plating and a hundred and one other forms of military necessities are primarily based on the raw iron and steel industry. New Zealand owes the duty to provide as much of this equipment as possible from her own resources. Every other part of the Empire is fully engaged in producing for its own needs, and New Zealand cannot afford to do less than its best in the same direction. Is sufficient being done ? Is it not possible to proceed more rapidly with the manufacture of the implements of war and with the mechanisation of the Army from internal resources ? Certain machinery and skilled workers may be desirable, but have the resources already available been sufficiently exploited ? Production from the Onekaka works, if it is as successful as the Government’s advisers hope it will be, should act as a spur to the war industries.

New Zealand may be young as a manufacturing country, but it does not lack engineering brains. Have these brains been sufficiently mobilised? The country has shown.that it can produce fighting men of unsurpassed quality. It can produce machines equally efficient. New Zealand today is producing thousands of articles of defence and industrial equipment that were never before produced locally. But the work must go on and be expedited with every available ounce of energy. Soldiers are being called to the country’s aid. It is just as necessary and urgent that engineering brains should be mobilised to the limit and set to the task of providing New Zealand with the weapons of steel that smash the way to victory. It has been done elsewhere and it can be done in New Zealand. This is a war of mechanisation as much as of men.