THE GEAR MEAT COMPANY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 932, 10 January 1890, Page 27

THE GEAR MEAT COMPANY.

Past failures in connection with the attempted establishment of manufacturing companies are

sometimes thrown in the teeth of Wellington, and quite unjustly, for the record will bear com parison with that of any other New Zealand centre, while there are three companies in the district that challenge comparison—The Gas, Gear’s Meat, and The Woollen Company. We deal now specially with Gear’s Meat, which, as was again demonstrated at the annual meeting on Friday, is splendidly to the fore. Wffiat marvellous progress it has made since its inception ! What a very few years ago it is since Mr Gear was asked to turn his large and lucrative business into a limited liability Company ! It was a thriving concern then, and under his able advice it has progressed year by year until to-day it stands confessed the most prosperous undertaking of the kind in this or any other Colony. There are other meat companies in the Colony which kill more stock in a year, but not one of them does so much with its raw products. The Gear Company, though only one in name, consists of a number of manufactures grouped together under the general heading, “ Meat Co.” The great financial success of the Company is due chiefly to the fact that when it buys a beast it wastes nothing. A Chicago pig-slaughterer boasts that he uses every bit of the beast except the squeak. It is this policy of utilising, and therefore of making profits out of waste material, that has made Chicago so big a meat centre, and has yielded such- large dividends. The Gear Company’s success has been due to this very policy, so wisely adopted by its Directors. When the Gear Company buys a sheep it uses every bit ot it, and wastes nothing except the bleat—which, after all, is not - wasted, for the very simple reason that sheep never bleat inside the pens but are perfectly dumb. Determined to work up its own bye products, the Company included fellmongerv in its operations, but not without considerable opposition from the more conservative of the shareholders. And it has made a triumphant success of that branch of the business, but only ,bv liberal\tactics in the introduction of the latest and most approved appliances for dressing the skins. How it has succeeded is apparent enough iu the top prices the skins command in the world’s market. The Company is now the largest shippers of its own wool in the North Island. Grouped around the fellmongerv are other manufacturing processes, the most important of which is meat preserving. Gear’s preserved meats are of world wide fame, for did they not beat the world at the Paris Exhibition, a fact that will ever redound to the Company’s credit. The preparation of bone dust and tallow are also successful operations, and the meat freezing is, as is now generally recognised, a veritable gold mine to the Company, but only because all the arrangements for carrying this -on are so perfect. Away beyond Pitone the Company has a large block of land, on which appliances for drying blood and making artificial manure will be erected directly, and then it may in truth be affirmed that the Company will waste nothing. Every one of its products will be utilised, for it is a cardinal article in the creed of its Directors . that every-: thing that goes to -vyaste is so much mopey out o,f the pockets of the shareholders. Indeed, the big profits have been made out of what many companies throw away as so much rubbish. So many big businesses grouped together means a great deal of management and a great deal of labour. When in full swing the Com pany employs about 250 hands, independently of the trades which supply it, such as cask and case making, and when the new works are up at the beginning of next summer the number will be much increased. The Compapy will use 800 tallow casks a month in the season, which alone would keep a small cask factory going. Undoubtedly Wellington is the “ meat capital of New Zealand. East year its frozen meat trade was the largest, and when the new freezing works are in full swing this port will always keep the lead. Hitherto the charges upon meat freezing have been very high, and have deprived the sheep-farmer of his just profits ; but happily the cogtli-

ness is lessening every year, and the Gear Company is doing its utmost to promote so desirable a modification. Wise agriculturalists have not hesitated to point out that the frozen meat trade, though an undoubted boon to New Zealand, is draining its soil of those elements which go to form bone and meat, and is steadily impoverishing the soil. The Gear Company are providing an antidote for this by utilising all available bone and offal, and converting them into artificial manures, to be returned to the soil from which they were taken. Thus, considered as a whole, the Company is doing a great work. One feature of the Directors’ policy cannot be too highly commended —theirneverceasing anxiety to be cautious whilst most enterprising. The weak point o? too many of the companies has been enterprise unleavened by caution, which has spelt ruin to not a few. The Gear Company’s Directors refuse to do business merely for the sake of doing business, and decline to attempt any new branch which will not show a profit. Careful scrutiny of the balancesheet shows, too, that the Directors have not been carried off their heads by a successful year, but have put the Company into a really sound financial position. From the very successful year which the Company has had we learn one very agreeable fact, of widespread interest. The Company has made, it is true, a handsome profit upon its output, but so has every runholder who has shipped through it. They have realised splendid prices. High prices that benefited the Company have enriched every shipper of frozen mutton in proportion. Several runholders in this province have never had so good a year : never before made such large profits as in 1889. The shareholders iu the Gear Company should begin the new year with pleasant visions, and the sheepfarmers must be gratified by the assurance that the hitherto wasted products of their sheep will be more profitably employed ia the future to the great benefit of the land. The shareholders, evidently satisfied with the management, have re-electerl, unopposed, the retiring Directors, Messrs Gear, Anderson, and Newman ; and it is well that a policy so successfully carried out should not be interfered with. The inference to be drawn from the balance-sheets of the various Meat Freezing Companies in Wellington and Hawkes Bay is that apparently they are only in their early youth. Nelson Bros, are launching out with new freezing works at Gisborne, and opening up an entirely new district, and also at Waipukurau. At Napier is another company doing good work. At Wellington two Meat Export Companies by amalgamating have greatly strengthened their position, and have much enlarged their freezing capabilities. Manawatu is preparing new freezing works, and Wanganui is anxious to go into the trade. Add to these the Gear Co.’s new plant and it will be seen what an immense trade in frozen meat will be done next summer from the Wellington district and Napier. The trade this year and next from these two ports will, it is reckoned, disclose au increase of 400,000 carcases ! What an amount of benefit will accrue to the districts whence these 400,000 carcases are drawn ! The export from Napier and Wellington will then amount to 1,000,000 carcases a year.