INSULATED STEAMERS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 29 May 1917, Page 5

INSULATED STEAMERS.

GREAT SAVING IN SPACE

By a simple expedient it has been discovered that a 6hip can carry about 25 per cent, more frozen meat than heretofore. Mr E. Owen Cox, managing director of Birt and Co., Ltd., informs us (says the Australian Meat Trades Journal) that this alteration has been agreed to by the British Government, who cabled to that effect. The expedient is simplicity itself. It consists" of cutting the sheep or lamb in two parts and fitting one portion inside the other. In the case of beef, a similar increase in freezing capacity can be obtained by sawing off the .legbone and the meat adhering thereto. It really means increasing the capacity of steamers and cold stores by fully 25 per cent. The present fleet of steamers trading with Great Britain in connection with the frozen meat trade represents refrigerated space capable of carrying about 500,000 tons of mjeat. By the adoption of the method referred to. this capacity will be expanded to 625,000 tons, or, in other words, three steamers will be doing the work of four. The immense value of this enlarged carrying i>ower cannot be overrated at a time when frozen meat, owing to the exigencies of the present international conflict, is being held up in Australia, New Zealand, and other places in consequence of shortage of steamers.

The adoption of this idea will have an important bearing also upon the capacity of cold stores in all i>art of the Empire, and will provide for much larger quantities of frozen meat that may have to wait shipment in the future.