VIEW OF PART OF MILITARY AMMUNITION PLANT WITHIN MAIN BUILDING OF THE
COLONIAL AMMUNITION COMPANY'S WORKS. AUCKLAND
best skilled engineers and experts, and its staff up to date in every respect in the manufacture of all small-arms ammunition. The company is thus enabled to turn out military and other ammunition equal to the best turned out by manufacturers in England. A new plant of machinery was erected in 1887, and since then the manufacture of ammunition has been carried on until it has attained perfection, and the imported ammunition has never been able to surpass it. To this military plant was added a plant for the manufacture of sporting ammunition, capable of turning out a sufficient number of cartridges to supply the Australasian Colonies, if necessary, and the results of the arrangements of the company have been that, notwithstanding; the superb qualities of the English manufactured goods, they are equalled by the articles turned out by the com- pany's operatives in New Zealand, while the consumer is charged no more than he his to pay for cartridges imported from England t the present time the company twenty male and seventy-three female operatives, and as the requirements of the colony increase, so also will increase.
the importance of the industry as an employer of labour. The company intends to increase its capital. if sufficient inducement is shown, to develop the mineral resources of the colonies, and the new branches will probably include the Manufacture of powder, as well as metals from colonial products, as soon as the output of ammunition justifies the outlay of additional capital. Mr Arthur Cecil Whitney has the management of the New Zealand works, and Captain John Whitney is now in Australia superintending the company's business there. The Melbourne works are capable of supplying the whole of Australasia with .303 or Martini- Henry ammunition, and at the present time (1900) have large contracts on hand for the various Australian Governments. The company, during the year 1898-9, laid down in Auckland a complete plant of machinery for the manufacture of .303 ammunition for the New Zealand Government, and has already delivered large supplies from these works, which are complete in every detail. The company makes its own tools for placing in the machines for manufacturing cartridges; and also
gauges of every kind and description, for use either inside or outside its works. The Legislature at Wellington sees the advisableness of encouraging the manufacture of ammunition in New Zealand, and apparently recognises the Colonial Ammunition Company as a most important factor in the colony's scheme of defence. It is possible the Government may some day think it advisable to take over the manufacture of ammunition from the company, but in the meanwhile the Colonial Ammunition Company is to be heartily commended for the energy, co severance, and enterprise it has shown in making the colony independent of outside supplies of ammunition. As the company's is the only ammunition industry south of the equator, there must, in the nature of tings, be a great and prosperous future before It. Since the photographs of the works printed with this article were taken in 1895, there have been extensive additions to both the machinery and the buildings, which are continually being added to.