KRUPPS LOSE HEAVILY UNDER INTER-ALLIED COMMISSION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17832, 28 April 1926, Page 13

KRUPPS LOSE HEAVILY UNDER INTER-ALLIED COMMISSION.

Remarkable figures showing the havoc wrought at the Krupp works under the direction of the Interallied Control Commission are given in the report presented at the annual meeting of the company. The machines destroyed numbered 9300, and had a total weight of about 60,000 tons. The dies and tools sacrificed reached the prodigious total of 801,420, their aggregate w-eight being 9588 tons. Furthere, 379 presses, tempering furnaces, oil and w-ater tanks, cooling plants, and overhead travellers were scrapped on the Commission’s demands. On the testing grounds 159 experimental guns and 1100 tons of ammunition were destroyed. The replacement value of this property is estimated at about 104,000.000 marks. The report mentions that the concern is now permitted to make annually not more than four guns above 17in. and armour plates required for the new construction of the German fleet, and that the Control Commission has sanctioned shops and machinery required for these purposes. Though, with the exception of a minimum of the directors’ qualifying shares, Krupps’ is a family concern, the chairman, Kerr Prornetor, thought it opportune to take the public into his confidence as to its present position. In an exhaustive speech he announced that the company closed its last working year with a loss of 15,000,000 marks. This was incurred chiefly in the shipbuilding department of the Germania Yard at Kiel, though iron mining in Siegerland and on the Lahn also showed a deficit, and the new machine and locomotive w’aggon shops at Essen had produced unsatisfactory results. This he attributed largely to the disturbance of the Ruhr oecupa-

tion. The big concession of farming land in Russia was giving better promise, “ though it unfortunately still made considerable demands on the financial capacity of the mother firm.” The chairman spoke with moderate optimism as to the prospects of the future, and laid stress on the importance of doing everything possible to promote German exports.