Valuable Metal

Industries In

French Pacific Colony

Prom Our Own Correspondent NOUMEA, March 1.

THE Nickel Company’s smelters at Point Doniambo, Noumea, which now em ploy 758 persons, is expected to pro duce 10,000 tons of nickel-metal per annum by 1952.

Of the present' employees, 421 are Euro peans, 156 Tonkinese, 146 Javanese and 35 are Melanesian.

New equipment is being installed.

Stockpiling for war purposes should keep the smelters at full blast for a long time to come.

A Noumea paper reports that pre liminary tests by Broken Hill of the 10,000 ton sample of New Caledonian iron sent to Newcastle by the Nickel "Co. ship Quebec, have proved satisfactory. The next test will be to establish the “rolling qualities” of the steel obtained, and prove its suitability for industry.

It is recalled that before and after the last war Broken Hill technicians visited the huge deposits of the Flaine des Lacs, which the Japanese had started to exploit prior to 1942.

Broken Hill last year also sent a geologist to report on New Caledonian manganese deposits. This year small stocks are being built up at Nepoui and other places for export to Australia. The intention it to send 5,000 tons within 12 months.

Meanwhile, the Tiebaghi Company, which employs 511 people, is modernising its chrome mine plant; and improvements are also being effected at the nearby, French-owned, Chagrin mine. Other

chrome mines now being worked are of modest order.

At Pouembout on the west coast, the Nickel Co. produced 12,045 tons of gypsum in 1950, for use in its Doniambo smelters.

Mr. W. V. Banting has left Fiji for a short vacation in the United Kingdom prior to taking un his new appointment as Deputy Accountant General, Northern Rhodesia.

Mr. S. G. Holland, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, visited Fiji on his way back to NZ after attending the Common wealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London, He was accompanied by the New Zealand Secretary for Internal Affairs (Mr. A. D. Mclntosh) and by his Private Secretary (Mr. K. M. Sleight). In Fiji he inspected the RNZAF establishments and consulted with the Fiji authorities on defence questions affecting Fiji in so far as they concerned New Zealand.