page_title: Flax in New Zealand
section_title: Flax mills
hierarchical_section_title: Flax in New Zealand / Later uses / Flax mills
caption_attribution_description: English: Waipapakauri steam-powered flaxmill AWNS-19061108-16-1
context_page_description: New Zealand flax describes the common New Zealand perennial plants Phormium tenax and Phormium colensoi, known by the Māori names harakeke and wharariki respectively. Although given the common name 'flax' they are quite distinct from the Northern Hemisphere plant known as flax
  P. tenax occurs naturally in New Zealand and Norfolk Island, while P. colensoi is endemic to New Zealand. They have played an important part in the cultural and economic history of New Zealand for both the Māori people and the later European settlers.
  Both species and their cultivars have now been widely distributed to temperate regions of the world as ornamental garden plants – and to lesser extent for fibre production.
context_section_description: From about the 1860s there was an active industry harvesting and processing flax for export, peaking at 32,000 tons in 1916, but the general depression of the 1930s brought the virtual collapse of this trade. In 1963 there were still 14 flax mills producing a total of almost 5,000 tons of fibre per year, but the last of them closed in 1985.
  In 1860 Purchas and Ninnis got the country's first patent for a flax machine. It took a ton of leaves a day and produced about 0.2 long tons (200 kg) of fibre. A large mill at Halswell had six of their patent strippers by 1868. Johnstone Dougall (1822–1892), a carpenter, also invented a flax-stripper about 1868, which he put in his first mill at Waiuku. Dougall was an exception in declining to patent his stripper. Many others patented variations, but the basic design was that leaves were fed between rollers, then hit by iron beaters, revolving faster than the feeder, thus stripping the epidermis from the fibre. Patents included Ritchie in 1862, Gibbons and Nelson in 1870, and Williams in 1893.
  In boom times flax was profitable. An 1870 news item said an acre, with 2 crops a year, could produce 2 tons of fibre, equating to £40 a year, or a net profit of £27 0s 3d, the cost being estimated at £12 19s 9d. For 4 tons the cost was calculated as depreciation 12s, 8 men's wages @ 25s a week, £10; an engineman £1 15; 12 lads @ 12s, £7 4s; 24 tons of green flax @ 15s £18; packing, baling, etc. £4; 2 tons 8cwt. of coal, £2 8s and freight etc., £5. Machinery was estimated at £500 – 8 hp engine with Cornish boiler £200; 4 strippers @ £22, £88; scutching hooks, £15; a screw press £12; building £185.
  So the inventions were quickly taken up, flax mills increasing from 15 in 1867, to 110 in 1874, though another source says there were 161 mills by 1870, employing 1,766. A & G Price built almost 100 flax machines in 1868 and, by August 1869, had sold 166. The fibre was coarser than hand-stripped flax, but by 1868 machines could produce about 250 kg (550 lb) per day, compared to about 1 kg (2.2 lb) by hand stripping. Improvements by 1910 increased that to 1.27 tonnes a day.
  Flax leaves were cut, bundled, taken to the mill and fed through a stripping machine. The slimy fibre was bunched, washed and the muka hung to dry. About ten days later the muka was scutched and baled for export, though some mills had ropewalks for local production. Production peaked between 1901 and 1918, but rust, depression and pasture replacing flax swamps, resulted in almost all mills closing by the 1930s.
  Mills were driven by water wheels, small stationary steam engines, or portable engines.
  With extensive burning of bush, few fire brigades, and little piped water, fire was a hazard for most buildings and flax was no exception. In 1890 a report on a fire in a large quantity of growing flax said, "These fires in most cases arise from gross carelessness, which might easily be avoided. Already in the past the quantity of green flax destroyed by this agency is very great." Mills were burnt too.
  By 1890 3,198 people were employed, but average pay was only £73 a year, among the lowest of average wage rates at the time. There were also frequent cases of workers caught in machines. Initially unions were resisted, as in the report of an 1891 strike, which said, "Mr Hall intends to proceed to Auckland for the purpose of procuring fresh men to work the mill." The Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894 and growth of unions improved the low pay and conditions. By 1913 a commentator wrote, "A few years ago flax milling was largely done by boys who received a few shillings per day, now in these more enlightened (?) days a boy gets a man’s wage. For instance the minimum wage paid this season at Mr Rutherford's Te Aoterei mill has been 11s 3d for a ten-hour day."
caption: Waipapakauri steam-powered flax mill in 1906 [http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd/HeritageImages/index.htm AWNS-19061108-16-1
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