BOVRIL, LIMITED.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, 29 April 1925, Page 3

BOVRIL, LIMITED.

ANOTHER RECORD YEAR. Presiding at _ the , twenty-eighth annual general’ meeting of Bovril Limited, held ,m London on 4th Alarch, Sir George Lawson Johnston (chairman) congratulated the shareholders on having liad a successful year. He s,aid: — -The gro§s r profit’ on trading, less advertisements, stands at £639,123, as against £571,491 for the year 1923. This gross profit,-of course, constitutes ej r6c6rd, whilst tlie’ expenditure- on .advertising, which has already been deducted from the gross profit, also reached record figure's. 'The debtor side of this account shows us the nett profit of £390,992, as against £351,898 in the previous-year.' As indicated in the report, -this increase is the result of a very gratifying. expansion in the home and export sales of Bovril during the year, 1924.’1 THE SELLING VALUE OF A SAIILE. Referring' toy recent advertising schemes, Sir Ge'ofge Lawson .Johnston emphasised how the display of some of the series of Bovril posters brought back' advertising memories of the last quarter-of a century, and many were surprised to see how long a slight tinge of humour had been a feature of these posters, which otherwise depict a serious food fact. ; ■ It is rather surprising that it is only in recent years that a .touch of humour in posters has become prevalent. SIR JAMES CRICHTON-BROAVNE ON FOOD AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY. Sir James Crichton-Browne said the Company was constantly receiving testimony to the sterling value or BovriL from all quarters of tho globe, and under the most diverse conditions. Bovril liad been usedv largely by the enterprising Oxford University Arctic Expedition, by which,, for the first time in history, an aeroplane h,ad been employed in Arctic exploration; it had been carried by Air Simpson, of the “Daily Telegraph” Expedition, which twice crossed the ' Continent of Australia . in a Bean motor cfr; - and supplies of Bovril had been laid down at ten selected depot points- for the use of the great Cape to Cairo motor expedition, now in progress under the leadership of Captain Court Treatt, Tliese were emergency uses of Bovril. The extent of its routine and habitual consumption was best shown _ by the figures which had been submitted to the shareholders. Bovril was of •firmly established reputation, and world-wide acceptance, and he ventured to predict for it : a still growing popularity. It represented in an agreeable and easily, assimilable form that animal protein upon which' all the great nations of the world had been built up, and the amount of which, as a. food constituent—as Lieut.-Colonel AlcCarrison, a very high authority, had just shown —might be taken as a measure ol the physical efficiency and power of resistance'to disease of the different races of India. ~ -t> •, On the nutrient properties of Bovril, Sir James s?.id lie need not enlarge, but he would claim for it what mightbe called a vitsminic virtue also. lhe vitamins, which were now becoming household words, were not .in themselves foods,. and did not nourish, but were essential to nutrition, and gave a fillip to certain metabolic changes in the system . Bovril did that also, as Prof. Thompson’s experiments had conclusively proved, and ,at the same time it did what tbe infinitesmal vitamins could not do—it removed the tissues and yielded energy. Bovril was a food in itself, and promoted tho assimi,auon of other foods.