THE ORIENT COMPANY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18736, 14 December 1922, Page 7

THE ORIENT COMPANY

YEAR’S OPERATIONS REVIEWED. PRE-WAR STANDARD APPROACHED. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, December 12. (Received Dec. 13, at 8.5 p.m.) At a meeting of the Orient Company Sir Kenneth Anderson, who presided, said that the net result of the year’s operations, which was in the neighbourhood of the pre-war standard, was not due to an increasp in the voyage earnings, but to a yeiy considerable and most welcome drop in the cost of running. The passenger earnings have been less, both outwards and homewards, the latter markedly so. As regards third class traffic, the volume in 1923 would depend primarily on the extent to which the Imperial and Commonwealth Governments were able to get their emigration scheme into active being. The case for it was irresistible, and it would be a strangely perverse misfortune if the proposals should fail in successful achievement. A policy of emigration by fits and starts was desperately expensive and wholly ineffectual. If the ships were to serve trade cheaply they must have an economic load assured them, not for one or two years, but for life. The average homeward freight earnings had been lower, due to the reduced rates, which the company could ill afford. The average outward freights had been better, hut that was due to the greater carrying power of the steamers employed this year as compared with last year. In regard to fortnightly sailings, he repeated the doubt expressed last year whether the game was worth the candle. There had been no expansion in passenger traffic, and the existing services bad proved more than adequate to deal with all traffic offering. A better policy w r as to meet the gradual increase in traffic by an increase in the size of the steamers.— A. and N.Z. Cable.