BRITISH NEW GUINEA.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 82, 8 April 1926, Page 7

BRITISH NEW GUINEA.

GERMANS WANT PLANTATIONS.

TWO LARGE TENDERS.

LONDON, April 7

Xhe "Financial Times" says it understands a tender of £2,000,000 has been made to the Commonwealth Government on behalf of an influential British syndicate which comprises important shipping and financial interests, for the British New Guinea plantations which were expropriated from Germany in the war. Another tender for £2,150,000 is said to have been received from another source which is believed to be acting on behalf of a German group. The paper remarks that Rhould the properties be acquired by the British syndicate the flotation of a public company is likely to follow. In that case the undertaking would be by a long way the largest plantation proposition of the kind ever presented to the public for support.

The largest existing company of a similar nature is the Anglo-Dutch Plantations Company of Java. This concern owns 212,014 acres of land, of which 68.787 acres are under cultivation.

The writer gives the total area of the New Guinea properties as 480,000 acres, of which the area under cultivation is not known, but, he says, it was estimated in 1920 that the aggregate value of the properties was about £4,000,000. — (A. and N.Z.)