The Mill is Built

Te Ao Hou, April 1955, Page 11

The Mill is Built As a mill site, Tasman chose 483 acres of flat land next to the Tarawera river—part of the Putauaki Maori Land Development Scheme. The owners sold this land to Tasman for £50 per acre, over double the government valuation. To satisfy the people, owners were offered Crown land in exchange for what was sold, so that nobody would be left landless against his will. Only one owner actually asked for such an exchange, however. The mill, constructed by Fletcher-Merritt-Raymond, measures 280,000 square foot floor space and has cost over £14 million. It is the fourth largest newsprint mill in the world and its paper machine delivering newsprint at the rate of 2,000 feet per minute, is the fastest in the world. Working round the clock, it will produce 75,000 tons of newsprint per year. Newsprint is however only one side of the story. The Kawerau plant comprises in addition to a sawmill, a groundwood pulp mill and a chemical pulp mill. The sawmill, the biggest in New Zealand, will produce 72 million Kaingaroa Forest today. (r.n.z.a.f. photograph)

board feet per year. The groundwood pulp mill will grind logs into pulp with huge carborundum stones driven by 1200 h.p. motors. The making of groundwood pulp, the main material of newsprint, has been described in an article in Te Ao Hou on the Whakatane Board Mill (issue 1). You cannot, however, make newsprint out of this ‘groundwood pulp’ alone. If paper is to hang together and have strength, it needs longer fibres than you can get by grinding, and these are made chemically. To make chemical pulp, wood is chipped with knives into half inch to one inch long chips. These chips are cooked under heat and pressure with sodium sulphate. After cooking, chemical pulp consists of loose fibres, longer, stronger and more pliable than groundwood pulp. 51,000 tons per year are produced of which 16,000 tons goes into Tasman's newsprint and the rest is sold. The interesting point about the three mills is that each specializes on a different part of the tree. The sawmill gets the valuable ‘straight butt logs’ which have the most heartwood and are easily made into timber. Oddly enough the top logs, which make inferior timber, are actually the best for the groundwood pulp; being free from heartwood, they are easily ground. The rough ‘butt logs’, the smallish logs, the slabs from the mill—in fact any pieces not particularly good for timber or groundwood pulp—are sent to the chippers, to make chemical pulp. The bark of all the trees is sent to the boilers as fuel. From the sawmill bark-free slabbings and edgings go to the chemical pulp plant for chipping. Sawdust and other sawmill and pulpmill waste likewise are used for fuel. Never before have trees been used in industry quite so economically. By joining the three mills together, raw material, capital and running costs are cut in a startling way. At the same time, by making so many products at once, Tasman is unusually well protected against the whims of the market. The knowledge of experts from all over the world went into the planning of this mill. It is impressive to read the long list of consultants from England, the United States, Canada and Scandinavia who at one time or another studied the paper-making qualities of the wood or the prospective yield of the forest or the economics of the whole project. We have had specialists on plant design, plant construction and even the management of the enterprise when it starts production. Since Tasman was created, there have nowhere in New Zealand been more high-powered foreign experts to the square yard than there were at Kawerau. Obviously, Tasman will enrich the country considerably as trainload after trainload of profitable produce rolls forth each day from a place where hardly anything was produced before. To make this possible, the government not only did most of the basic planning, but also made available to Tasman in shares and advances £11 million and invested in public works another £11.4 million. The new industry needed better roads through Kaingaroa forest, a railway from Murupara to Edgecumbe, much rolling stock, the harbour at Mount Maunganui, 50 houses at Kaingaroa, 220 at Murupara and 450 at Kawerau and numerous other works. Private capital subscribed for the Tasman venture has so far totalled £5 million. Mrs Monica Hardman, resident of Kawerau works at the mill office. (sparrow industrial pictures ltd.)