BUSINESS MAN RETIRES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 258, 31 October 1929, Page 8

BUSINESS MAN RETIRES.

MR. E. REWCASTLE.

WIDE DAIRYING EXPERIENCE

After having been connected with the New Zealand Co-op. Dairy Company, Ltd., in one form and another for the past nineteen years, Mr. E. Rewcastle, the company's manager in Auckland, is retiring owing to ill-health. Thirty-four years ago Mr. Ecwcastle started as office boy in the firm of Messrs. A. H. Nathan, Ltd. He passed through the successive departments until after four years as manager in charge of the sales of groceries and produce he entered the service of Messrs. Goodfellow, Ltd. That was nineteen years ago, and since then the firm, through amalgamation with different provincial dairy companies, has becomp the New Zealand Co-operativo Dairy Company, Limited. For seven years Mr. Rewcastle was at the Hamilton branch of the company, and he inaugurated the box and tin factory which made the concern selfsufficient. It was' his pioneering work, moreover, that put the casein industry on its feet. From there he was transferred to Auckland, where he finally took charge of the city centre. Speaking of the vicissitudes of the business during his connection with it, Mr. Ilewcastle said that though the war period had been one of great anxiety for all business houses, the worst experience of his business career was connected with the time of the influenza epidemic after the war. "The whole town seemed to crash in a few days," said Mr. Rewcastle. "It was infinitely worse than the war period. Everything was immediately disorganised." There were orders piled up in the office, he said, which were simply numbered and put to one side in the hope that they might be executed some time in the future. Customers in : the country who, in the early stages, did not know how serious matters were, used to write and complain of the sudden inefficiency of the service. One business nian in the city told him that in his line all departments except one had been closed down and all hands available were transferred to that one department; and that department was the one that mado coffins. ' Mr. Ilewcastle was tho guest of a gathering of employees at the premises of the firm yesterday afternoon, at which ho was presented by Mr. W. Goodfellow, managing director of the different companies represented, with a six h.p. motor boat engine. This, it was thought, would be vj\ appropriate memento, as he is particularly fond of fishing and is the owner of a boat. Mr. Goodfellow said that Mr. Rewcastle carried ' witli him the good wishes of all those with whom he came in contact.