hosphate

[?]ew Sources of hosphate [?]eeded in Pacific

7ITHIN the next couple of I generations, the sources of supply of phosphate in the ;ific and Indian Oceans will have ed up. What Australasian mers will then do for supplies artificial fertilisers is already raising the minds of scientists i others, t was reported from Wellington, , on July 26, that leading Aus lian and New Zealand scientists to combine in a Pacific-wide rch for workable deposits of tsphate or guano, he search has been prompted by fact that the main phosphate rces of these countries —Nauru, lan, and Makatea in the Pacific, I Christmas Island in the Indian an —are approaching depletion.

Ithough littie hope is held of lovering any large new deposits, t possibility cannot be over fed. here are, of course, numerous ill deposits of low grade sphate all over the Pacific, but ost all are on islands without hours or any sheltered water, ome of the more promising wn deposits are located in the i Guinea area, the southern . Islands of Fiji, and in the imotus. All these have been mined by the British Phosphate imission in recent times, he New Guinea deposits on Bat, ise. Mole, Wuvulu, and Aua nds in the north-west, were ked by the Germans round 1905 reported upon by the New nea Department of Agriculture their “Gazette” late in 1941.

BPC surveyed these deposits 929. hey surveyed the Lau deposits ing World War 11, and very ntly a phosphate scientist from oce surveyed the Tuamotu KSits. uite a large deposit of low ie phosphate has been worked Clarendon, South Island of New land, for many years. It is almost exhausted, here are enormous deposits in Middle East, but for political ons they may not always be ssible to Australasia. is, therefore, possible that e of these small low-grade nds deposits may become pay in time, but the combined Jvn Pacific deposits, apart from e still remaining on the main

jphate islands, would probably

, amount to more than one s normal supply for Australia New Zealand. The latter itry alone imports about 600,000 i annually.