Salt

Pacific

Worth more than its weight in gold

Some two and a half percent of sea water is salt, so it is the most abundant natural resource in the world. In a country surrounded by ocean, it is little wonder that almost as soon as Europeans began to settle in New Zealand they were trying to find ways to extract this' precious mineral.

Various experiments were conducted throughout the late 1800 s and early this century, but these met with little success.

Very few locations can provide the right mix of climate, soil conditions and sea water of a high enough density to produce solar salt. However, Lake

Grassmere, in Marlborough, was long recognised as a potential site. George Skellerup, of Skellerup rubber fame, recognised its tremendous potential and on a visit in 1942 decided there and then to make Lake Grassmere the site of New Zealand’s first solar-evap orated salt works.

Today, a good summer at Lake Grassmere will yield more than 60,000 tonnes of salt from the 1800 hectares of artificial ponds.

Dominion Salt’s two plants can sat isfy the nation’s domestic and industri al salt needs. Lake Grassmere also supplies domestic salt throughout New

Zealand. Bulk shipments from over seas supplement local production as required and are processed and refined at Mt Maunganui.

Dominion Salt began exporting vac uum salt to Australia in 1975. Three years later, pharmaceutical BP grades were being sent to Australia and later to South East Asia. Today Dominion Salt exports salt and salt blocks from both refineries to almost all of the Pacific islands through established agents in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Tahiti, New Caledonia and American Samoa.

In Australia, Dominion Salt can sup ply a good proportion of the Australian vacuum salt demand, while the market for pharmaceutical BP grades has extended to Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Today Dominion Salt manufactures a range of different salt grades and salt products to meet the growing needs of agriculture, the dairy industry, the freezing industry, paper mills, food manufacturers, water chlorination, soap and chemical processors. ■