Painting The Town

Along Bridge Street, just by the Maitai River bridge, a small paint company is seeing to the needs of Nelson painters just as it has done for the last 45 years. The Nelson Paint Co can not rank in size with the bigger paint companies, but it proudly claims that its products are not inferior to any. In fact, one of its products, a roofing paint, is acclaimed throughout New Zealand as a top quality product. Every year the company manufactures about 15,000 gallons of paint, mainly in the decorative field. Since much of the household painting is now done by non-professionals, we thought you would all like to take a look at just how the product you use is made.

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Surrounded by a few of the different varieties of paint made on the" premises, manager Eric Smith sees to the needs of painter Alan Wulff

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The manufacturing process commences with the filling of the ball mills (big tanks containing thousands of ball bearings) with turps (left) and talc by factory manager Maurie Delaney.