GERMAN LOSSES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 5 November 1926, Page 9

GERMAN LOSSES.

OX MOTOR BOAT CONTRACTS. WHY BRITISH TENDERS FAILED. t LONDON, Oct. 22. The Labour correspondent of the Daily Telegraph reports that there has oeen an interesting development of an event which caused astonishment in British industrial circles —and particularly in shipbuilding circles —in the early part or 1925. Consternation was created by the report that a German shipbuilding firm had succeeded in taking the contract offered by Messrs Furness, Withy and Co. for the construction of fiv© large motor-ships, although several British firms had given in tenders. Having regard to the parlous state of British shipbuilding, these tenders were cut to bare costs, but the German oiler was so very much lower that had all wage costs been left out of the British prices the German firm would still have taken the business. The German firm was the Deutsche Werft A.G., of Hamburg, and the fact tliat it was able to lift so important a contract by such a wide margin occasioned no little recrimination within tbp industry. At the time 30,000 men were unemployed in our shipyards. It was after this revelation that the employers and the trade unions agreed to a joint investigation, and a careful analysis followed. Now from the “successful” German firm itself comes the explanation, for the annual report of the Deutsche Werft Company contains a complete vindication of the British firms which tendered. That report shows a deficit on two years’ working in the German yard of 2,800.000 marks, or more than half the share capital. To meet the loss, the reserve fund of 323,000 marks is to be used, and the share capital written oft in the proportion of two to one, while a further issue will be made of 2,500,000 marks in new shares, thus bringing up the capital to the original figure of 5,000,000 marks. All the new shares are to be taken up by the founders of the Deutsche Werft. As the loss referred to is spread over two years, of course it cannot be due entirelv to the acceptance of the Furness Withy contracts, but this particular attempt to secure British orders must have been responsible for a good deal of the loss of the last year—a sum of 1,600,000 marks —and it is definitely quoted in the report as a “serious source of loss.”