GOLDFIELD DEVELOPMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22101, 3 November 1933, Page 7

GOLDFIELD DEVELOPMENT

v ENGLISH COMPANIES INTERESTED }■ ' LARGE PROPOSITIONS FAVOURED “ The great mining houses whose headquarters are in London are looking to the British dominions to provide them with scope for investment on a large scale,” said Mr G. W. Thomson, advising engineer to Industries, Limited, who returned yesterday afternoon from a visit to London,

Mr Thomson explained that these companies were favourably disposed towards undertaking operations within the British Empire because stable political conditions were guaranteed there, and the mining laws were more or less uniform. The opinion was held in London that the high price of gold had come to stay for some considerable time, and the large mining houses were anxious to secure new areas for development in order to take the fullest advantage of these high values. Provided that it could be shown that a mining proposition was sufficiently extensive to warrant operations on a large scale and that it would stand check testing by English engineers, he said, the interesting of English capital was at the present time a comparatively easy matter, and such propositions could be disposed of on the London market like the proverbial hot cakes. For the most part, said Mr Thomson, the English companies were mainly interested in new ventures that would lend themselves to development by dredging, and in this respect they would refuse to look at anything that would not provide at least 10,000,000 cubic yards of payable material, while the bigger the scheme the better it was liked. So keen were they to get these that ns soon as he arrived in London he was greeted with an inquiry from former mining interests with which he had been associated whether he had brought particulars from New Zealand of anything worth investigating. One such company was the Anglo-Oriental Mining Corporation, which has interests in the Malay States, Burma and Nigeria and is associated with the Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa. The representatives of this company were keenly interested in mining possibilities in New Zealand, and were prepared to give careful consideration to reputable mining propositions. Asked if he thought that there wore any fields in the Dominion likely to attract this and other London firms, Mr Thomson said that he considered that in both Otago and the West Coast there were areas which would appeal greatly to the English mining engineers, and while not prepared to say anything beyond this he indicated that there is every likelihood of English capital being available for investment in both. Speaking of the Wetherstones cement deposits, in which, as the representatives of Industries, Limited, he was particularly interested, Mr Thomson said that there were at least two of the largest London mining houses whose interest had been aroused in this huge deposit of gold bearing material, and provided that the reports on the ground offered to them were of a satisfactory nature and that the titles could be guaranteed they were prepared to send out their own engineers to undertake check testing of the results already obtained in the opening up of this area.

In answer to a question as to how the Cromwell field would appeal to the English companies, Mr Thomson said that at the present stage of development it would not interest them at all. For one thing the Cromwell Flat was not suitable for dredging, and from their point of view too little work had yet been done to prove the value of the field. The speaker emphasised the fact that in any dealings with, English raining interests there was no chance of promoters obtaining large sums by way of options, as the former, in their own phrase, refused “to give away money for the sake of a chance to spend more.” It had been indicated to him that the method adopted by the English companies in floating a new venture, was to allot approximately 10 per cent, of the total capital to the promoters-r-a distinct con-, trast with what had hefen atempted by some of the flotations in New Zealand within recent months.