Caledonia

Marshall Aid For New Caledonia

NSW Loses Valuable Coal Trade

By Our Noumea Correspondent HAVING suffered severely because it could not get adequate supplies of NSW coal, the nickel industry of New Caledonia (which provides 75 per cent, of NC’s exports) is seeking relief in various directions —and. more especi ally, from Marshall Aid.

The French Colony hopes to get coal supplies later on from Queensland. Mean while. through Marshall Aid, it is this month getting 4,400 tons of coal from America, per the Nickel Company’s new Canadian-built collier “Quebec.”

The company is also developing its own hydro-electric smelters at Yate, which turn out a ferro-nickel fonte which can be re-smeltered at Noumea with much less coal.

Coal has been the life-blood of the nickel industry. The failure of the NSW miners to cut adequate supplies has done harm to many communities other than those in Australia. The coal exports from NSW to Noumea, once a most valuable trade, are steadily disappearing.

Figures for 1938 and estimates for the present year form an interesting com rarisen. In 1938, NSW sent 87,000 tons of carbon and 50,000 tons of coke, the equivalent altogether of 162,000 tons of coal, which produced 8,193 tons of nickel matte, of 77 per cent, metal content. So 25.6 tons of coal were needed to produce a ton of pure nickel.

But, this year an estimate of only 45,000 tons of Australian coal is available, a de cline of 117,000 tons. However, with this, thanks in part to the preliminary smelt ing at Yate, 3,157 tons of metal will be produced, an average of 14.3 tons of coal to a ton of nickel.

It is hoped that the reopening of Yate will result in a lessening of from 25,000 to 30,000 tons of Australian coal needed annually by the industry.

And there is talk of improving the Yate hydro-electric supply further by con structing a second dam on the Plaine des Lacs, though this may take years to com plete.

Lack of transport, due to the sinking of colliers by enemy action has been another factor delaying output.

Ore production has been confined to two groups of mines, at Thio on the East coast, where 31,000 tons of ore were produced, of a teneur of 3.55 per cent.; and at Pin-Pin, on the other side of the Central Chain, which turned out 18,650 tons of ore of a teneur of nearly 8 per cent. In actual fact this is far the highest teneur per ton of any mine in the world.

In Canada and the United States, the teneur of nickel ores is generally below 2 per cent., and this is to-day declining.

MONTHLY production of Caledonian ore, affected by the departure of Javanese indentured labour, has dropped from a pre-war average of 23,000 tons to something like 7,000 tons. All the same, the use of additional machinery for extraction, and the use of white labour, has increased production from under 9 tons to over 17 tons per man per month. Salvation for the industry is looked for in increasing use of machinery which it is hoped will now be purchased in the USA with Marshall Aid.

For 1949, a minimum of 93.000 tons of coke is being asked, partly from Australia and part from the United States, and with the work done at Yate. fonte should be produced containing 6,000 tons of metal, nearly twice as much as in 1948.