Southland Meat Works Have Spare Capacity

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32233, 27 February 1970, Page 16

Southland Meat Works Have Spare Capacity

(New Zealand Press Association)

GORE, February 26.

There was “a tremendous unused capacity” in meat killing works In the Southland province, the chairman of the Southland Frozen Meat Company, Ltd, said today.

The four works were fully engaged for only eight working days between Christmas and Easter in the 1968-69 season, and production was even further below optimum this year. Giving his personal opinion at the company's annual meeting, the chairman (Mr A. F. Gilkison) said Southland would need a few new works —but not before 1980. He did not dispute the Trotter Committee’s 1966 rej commendations that a new works would be needed and that it should be at Gore, but he disagreed with the timing. Southland's population of breeding ewes last year was one million below the forecast number on which the Trotter Committee had based its recommendation that the Gore works should be produc- | ing in 1972, Mr Gilkison said. The present four works had a proven capacity to handle 390,000 sheep and lambs a week. Yet the best that had been done over a sustained period was an average of 1270,000. “1 question whether it is wise to spend up to about Sl4m for a new works before the demand for the facilities! has been proven to exist,” he said. Dividend Approved The annual meeting approved the recommended final dividend of 6.9 per cent —and the bonus dividend of 2.5 per cent —for the year to

October 1. The interim payment was 1.6 per cent. Net tax paid profit was up by $181,318-—or almost 18 per cent—to $1,013,555, and $500,000 of this was transferred to reserves. Current assets rose $670,167 to $4,278,065, the meeting was told, and since the balance date, the company had increased its paid-up capital <from $4.5m to ssm.