Schmitt, Geoffrey Joseph (1921-2003)

In the early 1920s the Kaingaroa Forest was planted in the central North Island in response to growing concerns about the rapidly declining natural forest resources in New Zealand. By the mid 1930s it had become the largest man-made forest in the world. Twenty years later the New Zealand Government was seeking proposals to utilize the growing forest and by 1952 the Tasman Pulp & Paper Company Ltd was formed - the largest industrial development to have been undertaken in New Zealand at that time.

There were no existing pulp and paper mills in New Zealand at this time due to the relatively low demand within the country. This small domestic market meant that Tasman would need to rely on exporting the majority of its product overseas, indeed it sought to export 70% of its output from the beginning. That the company was to rely so greatly on the export market made it quite an unusual development in postwar New Zealand, largely an insular market. It has been argued that the need to secure the market for Tasman’s newsprint exports was a significant factor behind the negotiations of a partial free trade agreement between New Zealand and Australia in 1965.

After the company was formed in 1952, Geoffrey Joseph Schmitt was to become the first employee of the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company, appointed Company Secretary in August 1953 and also taking on the role of General Sales Manager in 1955 before becoming Commercial Manager of the company the following year. Between 1960 and 1963 he was employed as General Manager of Tasman and became Managing Director thereafter until his resignation from the company in 1967.

The bulk of the papers in this collection cover the period of Schmitt's employment by Tasman, from its early beginnings in 1952 until his retirement in 1967 when the company had grown to over 2000 workers and was one of New Zealand’s largest exporters. The papers include files relating to the various positions Schmitt held throughout this time. Many of these files, particularly the correspondence and reports, were of a confidential nature and constitute a significant collection of material on industry and business developments within New Zealand.

There are a number of technical reports and brochures spread throughout the collection that may be of particular interest in relation to the commercial paper industry within New Zealand and Australia. A considerable portion of the correspondence is focused on technical problems faced at the pulp mill and includes reports and related files on practical matters and also detailed investigations undertaken to improve the quality of the paper being produced.

Supported by Professor Gary Hawke, Schmitt began writing a history of Tasman throughout 1984, later resuming the task in 1997, by recording his recollections onto tapes which were transcribed into text documents. These were revised and checked between 1998 and 2002 with forty copies of the book 'Tasman: A Personal History. Early Years of Tasman Pulp and Paper Company Limited' completed in 2002. A number of these books were deposited in libraries throughout New Zealand to "provide material relevant to scholars and others with a serious interest in an aspect of a period in New Zealand’s industry and commerce".

Professor Hawke noted in the foreword of the completed book the "ruthlessness" with which Schmitt checked up on his recollections. Certainly these papers are a testimony to this, containing numerous annotations and clarifications which have evidently been added throughout the period when Schmitt was working on the book. It may be possible to date these later annotations by reference to a table of progress included in the final book that documents the dates each chapter was worked on

Arrangement of series:
The series have largely been arranged by the ordering of the papers as they arrived in the JC Beaglehole Room at Victoria University Library. The first and largest group of papers was accessioned in 1998 through Professor Gary Hawke. These arrived divided into 23 separate bundles each having a descriptive note attached outlining the scope of the material contained within and often drawing attention to certain files. To preserve these groupings, a separate series was created for each of the bundles.

A later accession concerns chiefly correspondence c1997-1999 between Prof. Schmitt and Dr Michael Bassett on aspects of Dr. Bassett's book 'The State in New Zealand 1840-1984'.

Papers, chiefly relating to the Tasman Pulp & Paper Company Ltd.

• Tasman Pulp & Paper Company Ltd.