CASSEL GOLD EXTRACTING COMPANY (LIMITED).

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8471, 23 January 1891, Page 6

CASSEL GOLD EXTRACTING COMPANY (LIMITED).

Thk sixth ordinary general meeting of the Cassel Gold Extracting Company (Limited) was held on December 10 in the Merchants' Hall, Glas&jw. Mr. Leonard Gow presided, and there was a large attendance of the shareholders.

The Chaiiim\n, in moving the adoption of the annual report, which was held as read, said that ifc showed a total turnover for the year of £22,223. Of this sum, the ordinary or normal expenditure was £5073, leaving a balance of £17,150 as special or exceptional expenditure. But they had to deduct from this last item the outlay on the Transvaal works, now repaid, the cost price of reagents in etock, and other assets, amounting in all to £7942. This reduced the special expenditure to the more modest sum of £9207. The expenditure of this sum had been absolutely necessary, as the countries where they hoped to establish their business were far away and they must go to them. The American expenditure was now entirely stopped, and he considered io had been very moderate, when they had regard to the position they had secured there. In South Africa the expenditure wasdown to a very moderate figure, and would cease with the floatation of the South African Company ; and they calculated that their expenditure in New Zealand would be down to a small figure by the end of the year. With their amounts of stock, cash received from South Africa, cash received and to be received from sales of reagent, plus cash on hand, their financial position was very comfortable and very satisfactory. (Applause.) They attached great importance to the work which had been accomplished in South Africa. It was a source of much satisfaction to them all that each of the prominent undertakings in which theit process was at work showed a marked advance ond improvement on what had gone before, thus bearing out what they had all along claimed—namely, that their process being a first-rate thing, would so prove itself more and more as experience was added to experience, and as it was worked on a larger and more extensive scale. The Salisbury Company had been so impressed with the value of the process that they had purchased the plant, which had been erected for demonstration purposes, for £3500, winch repaid the Cassel Company all thoir outlay. This was a testimony of the highest practical value. Mr. McArthur had returned from South Africa full of enthusiasm, and he had so enlarged his experience of the process that he had designed plant in advance of anything the company had used yet. There was no process there, except their own, fitted to deal with the immense resources of refractory ore. The South African Syndicate were fully alive to that and to the value of the property they possessed, and they were confident of success. The mining community were also becoming alive to the fact that th«y had now before them an economical process capable of dealing with their ores. To use a Scottish expression, the heather was now on fire there, and plant was being made for a number of other mines. At four of these mines he believed the plant would be in operation by this time, and there was no doubt that all of them, and many more, would soon be :\ substantial source of revenue to the company. They had>lso sold between 50 and b'O tons of reagent to their South African friends, and within the iast few days they had received their first payment of £2844. This represented only a dealing with 4000 or 5000 tons of ore, and they regarded it simply as a small beginning. (Applause.) With the use of this process the Salisbury Company, he believed, was making a profit of 100 per cent, on what they paid for the works, and this was in dealing with low grade ores of only about half an ounce. As to their prospects in America, he considered that they had been most fortunate in the gentlemen who had seemed the rights of their business there. The field they had to work upon was very rich and practically unlimited, and they were fully alive to the opportunities it offered. In Australia their affairs were in a very satisfactory and promising condition, the difficulty about the patents having been removed; and they had good hopes that before lon.£ active steps would be taken for the formation 'of a company in New Zealand, buotliey must first endeavour to get the operations at the Crown mines put on a satisfactory footing, and he was happy to inform them that thi3 matter had practical.y been adjusted, and he thought they might anticipate a fair return for their outlay"and trouble there. The directors had in view the intension of their operations to Chili, Bolivia, and Peru, and other South American folds, bnt the first new field they intended operating upon was Mexico. It was an immensely rich field and very accessible. Questions had been sent, to him asking him to state the term? that had been given to t,1)3 South African Syndicate. He had to ast tho shareholders to exercise a little mow patience in this matter and to have confiienee in the directors. If publicity were givoi to these at present the effect of it would le to materially interfere with the success ojtho negotiations and the success of the company. The directors also wished that thos.itne patience should be exercised with regard to America. As to the success of the process, they would sometimes hoar, no doubt, that tho process had failed. He ask e<l tliein never to believe that. These I reports were got up, he did not know by whom, lut they could all guess for what purpose. They had now established the success of their process upon such a vast variety nf ores all over the world, that it would be impossible to make any man, who knew tho extent to which it had been proved, belie\e that it could now be a failure. (Applause.) In regard to the future, he wtukl venture to tell them that he and his tolleagues, judging from the present satisfactory outlook in so many quarters, felb themselves justified in believing that they were fast approaching the line across which they would find them • selves in tho land of dividends, and when once in that hnppy place they further believed their onward progress would be rapid. (Applause.) Mr. AitBOJ, seconded the approval of the report.

Replying to a number of questions, the Chairman said it would have been very desirable to have n cash payment from the American syndicate ; but the fact was that there was nothing almost that the mining public hid less confidence in than a company wkieh professed to have a process of treating refractory ores. In America hundreds of processes had beon discovered and recommended and tried, and a great deal of money spent on them, but hitherto there had not been one of them anything like a general succors. To get an adequate cash payment in America was therefore impossible. Ho believed, however, that the stock they held would become infinitely more valuable than any single cash payment. In regard to Ravenswood, the work had been going on satisfactorily; but since the Australian syndicate had been iormed, they did not go on developjng there, as things were very much m the hands of the syndicate. As to the *ar East, they had had a communication from Mr. Stoddart. Financial matters in China have been anything but satisfactory, and he had been unable to enlist the co-operation of capitalists as yet. The matter was still, however, boiug kept in view. A« to Mysore, they did not treat any ores there, and they had no connection with these mines whatever In regard to their works for the production of the cyanide, he thought they were quite equal to supply the prospective demand, and that they would be a satisfactory tributary of revenue to the cominv As to the five shillings call that had been made, it was intended that dividend should only bo paid on the amount actually ca°led up. The directors were about to oTter into negotiations for getting a London quotation for their shares. The roport was then adopted. Messrs John Beckett and Leonard Gow were afterwards re-elected directors ; the Temuneration of the directors was fixed at £600 for the past year ; and Alesars. Kerr, Andersons, flair, and Main were reappointed auditors.