NEW ZEALAND SHIPPING COMPANY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 270, 14 November 1910, Page 9

NEW ZEALAND SHIPPING COMPANY.

(Prom Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, October 7. Steamship companies engaged in trade with the Antipodes have mostly been doing -well of recent times. As an example, the New Zealand Shipping Company's experience may be quoted. The accounts for the year 1909-10 just issued show a disposable balance of £56/005, as against £42,722 for the previous twelve months. The larger figure is, too, arrived at after applying an extra £10,000 to the insurance fund. The result is seen, in the distribution of a bonus of 2/0 per share, in addition to the usual dividend of 10/- per share. The Company was organised at Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1873. Its progress has been coincident with the growth of the frozen meat trade of the Dominion, in regard to which, it has played the part of a pioneer. This industry once established has never looked back, and as in the main responsible for the ever-increasing fleet of fine steamers .which now link up New Zealand with the Mother Country.

It will always stand to the credit of the New Zealand Shipping Company ■that it was the flret steamship enterprise to adopt for cargo-carrying purposes the principle of a combination of reciprocating engines and turbines. The Ota.ki, as this first vessel is named, represented a bold experiment, which was so successful that the ordering of another and a larger steamer similarly engined was speedily resolved on. The Company's fleet now numbers sixteen steamers, of which ten are twin-screw and two triple screw. They represent a total of about 120,000 tons. The Rotoroa, the new 11,000-ton passenger steamer, with combination engines, leaves London on her maiden voyage to New Zealand on October 27th.