PROFITS OF MEAT-FREEZING.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 114, 10 November 1900, Page 4

PROFITS OF MEAT-FREEZING.

Mr. -H. D. Bell, who presided at the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of the Gear Meat Company on Thursday last showed in ■& very lucid manner- tho many difficulties of managing a meat freezing establishment, and how impossible it is to regulate with any degree of certainty the profits and losses of such an undertaking. The trade is carried on under peculiar conditions, and the business is a fluctuating one. The cabled quotations oi s this week do not help the freezing companies and are only misleading to the farmers, for the reason that they afford no guide as to what will be the state oi the market three months hence. The trade necessitates anticipation, and it is as easy to underestimate fche probabilities to overestimate them. Mutton and beef intended for export take time in preparation, and it may be saiely stated that three months .elapse from the time the animals are killed until the meat reaches t>he British consumer). Managers and directors of freezing companies now have soniQ, years of experience to guide them, and, generally speaking, they manage to approximate cost price to selling price very finely, just leaving that small margin which makes for profit. But there are times when unforeseen circumstances arise, and there is either a huge profit or the reverse. The past year has been exceptional, for reasons that are well known, and the profits of the freezing companies were large. It must not be supposed that the freezing companies go on making profits month after month— on the contrary, there are many months when they lose heavily. Again, when one, company is losing another is makjng a profit, simply because of the divergent views of the respective managers. The business is uncertain ahvays, and there niust always be these differences. What makes the freezing companies appear to b© earning abnormal profits is'^ the fact that their turnover is soveral times greater than the capital. To the ordinary business man this would imply small profits, because the larger the turnover the smaller the profit necessary to reward Capital, but to the demagogue and the posing' politician, the aggregate profit which is relatively large to capital is more useful to mislead the unthinking in the community. A' farmer will not hesitate to pay his woolbroker 2^ per cent commission besides the charges, for handling his woolclip, yet the (Same farmer ist asked to believe that he is being robbed and swindled^ by paying "the freezing companies 1 per cent, to 1^ per cent, on the fat stock he sells to them. There are many difficulties and peculiarities governing the frozen meat trade, and while it will be readily admitted by unbiased people that the freezing companies have rendered an inestimable service to the colony entitling the shareholders to a full if not generous measure of profit, still there are some artificial disadvantages which hurt the producer, and for which

a remedy ought to be sought. The remedy dues nob lie in anathematising tlio directors and managers of freezing companies, but in seeking for methpda to counteract the influence of the ring of Smithfield butchers and London middlemen.