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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3532, 2 November 1882, Page 2

A. project is oa foot for the formation of a company for the purchase of Messrs Gear and Beale's bnsiness at Wellington of meat preserving, meat exporting, and butchering. The business is very extensive, and has been developed into one of the most successful concerns ot its kind in the colony. The proposed capital of the company is £100,000 in 10,000 shares of £10 each. The vendors guarantee six per cent net profit oa the first year's working, and take £10,000 worth of fully paid-up shares as part purchase money. The total purchase money for the business will amount to £60,000. The advantages offered to shareholders are the same as those in the purchase of Messrs Nelson Bros.' works by the Hawke's Bay Meat Export Company, namely, that meat fieezing must be combined with boiling-down and preserving. As the prospectus of the Wellington company acts forth, " Out of a mixed flock of 1000 sheep sent in to be slaughtered and frozen for export not more than one-half will be found fit for freezing; the remainder can be more profitably used for preserving and tallow. This is the chief reason why the indiscriminate shipping of mixed sheep in a frozen state to the London market has resulted in sucb wide differences of prices. The recent establishment of meat freezing companies in New Zealand, as tending to develop the production of more live stock in the colony, is much to be commended. It is, however, impossible that these ventures can be worked as profitably as a company combining a large private business with preserving and freezing. The question of meat supply in Europe is exciting great attention at present, in coneequence of the American supplies having fallen off considerably, and the European demand being constantly on the increase. So great is this demand, that it is only necessary to state that the importation of meat and cattle into the United Kingdom in 1870 amounted to a value of £7,708,000, and that in 1880—a period of only ten years —it had grown to £26,612,000. This increase is daily growing larger, from the fact that the consumption of meat per inhabitant is increasiug in all countries, owing to the higher wages that manufacturing industries have introduced among the masses. The future prospect which this state of things opens out to every stockowuer in the colony, and the enlarged value it gives to the fruitful lands of New Zealand, cannot be too highly estimated."