Rangatira loss ‘not yet known’

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33062, 1 November 1972, Page 18

Rangatira loss ‘not yet known’

(N.Z.PA. Staff Correspondent)

SYDNEY, October 31

Sir Peter Abeles, chief executive of the Union Steam Ship Company, confirmed that the Rangatira was showing a heavy loss.

Asked to comment on a claim made yesterday by Captain J. W. Dickinson, general secretary of the Merchant Service Guild, that the ship was losing $15,000 a week, Sir Peter Abeles said he could definitely confirm that the ship was losing heavily.

“But we are not yet in a position to know what the exact figures are,” he said. “We have no indication of seasonal trends, for instance, and it must be remembered that the service is a new one.”

However, the fact that the ship was losing money was of major concern to the company, he said.

In an effort to overcome the losses, the company was using normal management procedures, and was in the process of gathering as much information on the service as possible. “When we have gathered all our information we will make an approach to the New Zealand Government to see what can be done,” Sir Peter Abeles said. The question was connected to competitive freight rates offered by the Govem-ment-run rail ferries on Cook Strait. He dismissed out of hand a suggestion by Captain Dickinson that many seafarers believed the Union Company was using the services provided by Alltrans, through the railways, to run down New Zealand coastal shipping services. Alltrans is a subsidiary of Thomas Nationwide Transport, the Australian firm of which Sir Peter Abeles is managing director and which has a majority interest in the Australian shareholding of the Union Steam Ship Company. “If that is an accurate report of what Captain Dickinson said, you can tell him from me that it is the greatest load of rubbish I have ever heard,” Sir Peter Abeles said.

The Union Company, run by New Zealand and Australian interests since December 31, earned a consolidated tax-paid profit of $928,040 in the nine months to June 30 of this year, compared with losses of $841,512 in 1969-70, when the line was run by the British-based P and O Group.