A FLOURISHING NATIONAL INDUSTRY.

Evening Post, Volume LIX, Issue 4, 5 January 1900, Page 4

A FLOURISHING NATIONAL INDUSTRY.

It is not too much to say that without the frozen meat industry the colony today would be almost as backward and unprogressive as is Tasmania, which, having climatic and physical conditions similar to those of New Zealand, has no great industry to compel it to assume the position it ought to take as a producer among the colonies of Australia. The Mayor of Wellington averred yesterday at the luncheon given in celebration of the completion of the Wellington Meat Export Company's works, that but for the meat industry New Zealand would have at one time been bankrupt, or something very like it, and; this found an echo among the large assemblage of commercial men present. It is pleasant to reflect that the industry had its first great impulse in this country, that it is carried on with greater enterprise and success than in any of the sister colonies, and that its capacity for expansion is practically unlimited. What may yet be done may be gauged by what has .been done in less than sixteen years by the Wellington Meat Export Company. The first general meeting of the company was held in this city in 1881, but it Avas not till nearly two years later that the contract was let for the erection of works. The same year an experimental shipment of 5794 sheep and 352 quarters of beef unfrozen were shipped by the Lady Joqelyn, the freezing being done on the vessel. The, works were completed in 1884, but the excessive freight rates and other untoward circumstances precluded the possibility of declaring a dividend in that year or the succeeding one. The shareholders were elated ' when in 1886 the directors announced that during the year they had frozen and shipped 24,916 sheep, had engagements for freezing 47,000 in the coming year, and were in a position to declare a dividend of 5 per cent. The industry thereafter went .ahead by leaps and bounds, and ever since substantial dividends have been declared. New slaughterhouses and freezing works were necessitated to cope with the growing business, and to-day the company is in possession of one of the completest meat freezing and preserving establishments in the southern hemisphere, while the last yearly returns show an output 55 times greater than the Lady Jocelyn shipment of carcases, and nearly 20 times in excess of the initial shipment of frozen meat in 1886. The shipments of frozen beef have progressed in still greater ratio.. The wage-sheet alone now amounts to about £600 per week. Figures like these are eloquent, and when it is considered that the Wellington Meat Export Company is only one of many similar companies scattered over the colony, it is not difficult to appreciate what the fiozen meat industry has done towards bringing about the stable prosperity which New Zealand now enjoys.