I am not surprised. Fibatube was one of the very best blank makers in the 70s. Hardy's used the name 'Fibatube' to sell blanks to the other rod makers. We, at East Anglian Rod Co (EARC), were once told by Jim Hardy that we were their largest UKclient. It would have been quite uneconomical for them just to make the blanks they needed for their own rod production. By selling to others they got the economy of scale, which enabled everyone (themselves included) to get blanks at a reasonable price. Or, what was perceived at that time to have been a reasonable price. The capital price of the machinery needed to make fibreglass blanks was very substantial at that time. Amortisation had to be built into the cost of the product.
God knows what Hardy/Fibatube thought when they saw the price of FINISHED fibreglass rods that started to come in from Korea in the mid/late 70s! They were less than the cost of their blanks.
However, I digress! Your comment, Kevin, does not surprise me. I believe that of all the rod types (float, fly, quiver, spin, boat, beach etc) fibreglass was most suitable for spinning rods. Try using a 10ft glass fly rod on a Scottish loch with a sinking line from a boat. Knackering! Carbon Fibre, no problem. Beachcasting with fibreglass..hard work. Float rods often had the wrong balance &, unless back-weighted, could be unwieldy. Probably the nearest fibreglass came to carbon was in short fly rods & swing-tip/quiver tip rods up to about 9.5ft.
Most people do not realise that is was EARC that produced the first quiver tip rod. Fibreglass 9.5 ft (the KEN SMITH). Made from the top 2 sections of a 14ft Lerc blank with integral quiver. One of our salesmen sent his sample back to us saying.."you must be joking. This rod will never sell". Within 18 months it was our top selling rod. Sadly neither EARC nor Ken Smith patented the quiver principle. I digress again. That's enough!!