OIL CHIEF RETIRES

Manawatu Times, Volume LII, Issue 3576, 6 April 1927, Page 5

OIL CHIEF RETIRES

MR. E. E. WAGSTAFF’S NOTABLE CAREER. After long and valuable service in the oil industry, Mr. E. E. WagstafT, general-manager of The British Imperial Oil Company Ltd., is retiring from active business life. For a quarter of a century Mr. Wagstaff has directed the. operations of the Shell Distributers in Australia and in that time he has seen a remarkable industry grow under his guidance. At the beginning of the Company’s Australian activities a handful of men were employed in tho distribution of kerosene. A few years later came the motor ca* with it Mr. Wag-staff's opportunity. A keen and highly skilled mechanician he was among the first of the owner-drivers. Ho foresaw th e part that motor transport was destined to play in commercial development and resolved that the motorist’s fuel and lubricating needs would be mot by his Company at every possible point.

From this objective he never departed, and to-day “Shell” Installations and Depots are (to quote fx - om an address recently presented to liimk “established from the desert to the seas.’ Mr. Wagstaff has been presented with a richly bound album containing photographs and autographs of some 3,000 employees throughout Australia and Now Zealand. This book is replete with aerial views of the Company’s big plants in the capital cities, and is decorated with watercolour impressions of the Company's various activities. This gift has been presented to Mr. Wagstaff at a gathering of Shell representatives from all parts of the Commonwealth and Dominion.