THE WELLINGTON FARMERS' MEAT CO., LTD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9574, 21 August 1909, Page 5

THE WELLINGTON FARMERS' MEAT CO., LTD.

A MOST IMPORTANT LETTER.

THE QUESTION OF INLAND

WORKS

In answer to inquiries made by Mr J. C. Cooper, Cnairman of Directors ot the Wellington Farmers' Meat Company, Ltd., as to the success of inland freezing works, Mr G. W. Leadley, Managing Director of the Fairfield Freezing Works, has written an extremely interesting letter on the subject, of which the following are extracts: —

"Wakanui, August sth, 1909. J. C. Cooper, Esq. Dear Sir, -Yours of the 2nd reach-' ed me to-night. I hasten to reply. The three most important matters to be considered in connection with the establishment of freezing works are: —l. Railway Facilities. 2. Water supply. 3. Drainage. Of courEe you will recognise the importance of the first, i.e., railage, and wherever your proposed works may be placed you will no doubt make that a first consideration. With regard to the second (water supply) it is of very great importance that you should have a sufficient supply of good water—good I mean in the sense that it should be "soft" and clean, ihis is important because of the needs of th« skin and wool department of your works. At Fairfield we depend on the water race system of the Ashburton Plain, and have ( had to do a great deal of experimenting with filter basins, etc., in order to obtain the necessary cleanliness, and even then I have heard complaints that the wool scouring ,is not quite what ic ought to be owing to the want of absolutely pure water. Then as to drainage, this too is very importait. A< Fairfield we simply run tie sewage down our own drains an! irriga e ; the grass paddocks with it, two men being kept constantly employ;ed!leading.it about the paddocks iwith a sinele furrow pluugh a d istiovela. But then we have a co;siderable area"of land, and it is or' a \e»y levtl and porous character, anu

I very suitable for irrigation impose ! The importance of the drainage question will be apparent to you when I remind you that Nelson Bros, erected works some years ago at Hornby, near Christchurch, and neglected first to secure the rights to conduct their sewage across some adjacent land to connect their works with the river, and the result was that they have never killed a sheep; although they offered £7,000, for the privilege of carrying their sewage channel across some farms, they were blocked, and the buildings have stood there ever since unused except for storage purposes, the Selwyrt County Council refusing a killing license. As to the merits of inland versus port works, I should strongly advise keeping your works near the stock supply. In the first place you will probably meet with some difficulty in obtaining a sufficiently large area of suitable land near Witf—lington, and the price will no doubt be pretty stiff. I have bad considerable experience in sending stock to freeze both at Belfast and at Fairfield, and my experience is that it is far better to rail the dead meat When I used to send stock to Belfast there were always rejections for bruises, etc., occasionally deaths, sometimes rejections alive. These last could be sent to Addingtan and sold, as they had not sufficient land to hold them. The result was always, a loss on these. The dead rejects too were sold at a reduced price per lb, and there was always a loss on these* where at Fairfield we always had any rejects held in the freezer for our own use, and get a coupte of these sent to Ashburton as we require them and use them ourselves —it costs one shilling for three carcases, i.e., Fairfield to Ashburton by rail. Then the presence of a works in the heart of a stock fattening district is of such great benefit to the growers that 1 have no hesitation in saying that in our case it has. put from a pound to thirty shillings per acre on all the land within radius of five to twenty miles of the works. Of course you may expect that when your works are open that the rival companies will try to secure all the stock which you would be , likely to get. Thay will do this na, '. matter Vfhere you y!ace your workt," but they will be less likely to do it if the works were near the farmers, as the advantages at having stock killed near home are so and obvious that farmers will jtipulatu (in making gales to tex* porters) that the stocks ffiust be killed at the local works; at Ijasfc that is our experience here. If you utf do so, jt would be well i F Jfau got your men to guarantee you thttf stock for a year or two; we did that at Fairfield at first, but the ddccesi was so great from the first tticit they were quite still ft is always best to be on {tie safe side, as you don't krfow whiat; comf petition you may have ttfftice. Then in buying land for your siffe, I would advise you to get a good sized block if you can. You ask if there is any difficulty in selling c.iX meat railed long distances. N~ne whatever. Please remember that for many years all the meat killed at the Smitbfield works (at Timaru), had to be railed for shipment to Lyttelton, as the Hume boats could not get into Timaru until recent year. The insulated vans provided by the Governmnet are quite satisfactory, anrt moreover a good deal of the travelling is done at night when large quantities are being sent away, special trains being put on at night. Re insurance—no discrimination is made on meat killed inland, at least I have never heard of it, and I think I should have done had it existed, This yedr i have sent Home through Fairfield about 5,000 carcases and have had no complaint from any cause. On the general question,— You ask for any information or hints I may be able to give. I may say that 1 took a prominent part in the establishment of the Fairfield works. I called (through the Mayor) the first m-jeting of.farmers to consider the question, and moved the first resolution affirming the desirability 1 of establishing local works. After the initial steps had been taken wa divided the county into sections, for canvassing purposes, in order to get new shareholders. I may explain that the Canterbury Company stipulated that we should sell £30,000) worth of shares south of the Rakaia river before they would promise ft* lay down works in the Ashurton County. We did this in three weeks. But I understand that the company is arleady formed in your case, anrt going strong. One thing I would advise is, spread your shares over as many men as you can, giving prospective suppliers tha preference of course. But if you are establishing works near a country town the business men ought to take up shares aa the presence of works near the place will give a fillip to business. Then do not call up your capital too rapidly. Weonl/ ctlhl up 30s the first year—los on application, 10s on allotment, and 10s in sir months, but of course our case was different to yours, as our company was already established whereas yours is entirely new. Our shares are £5. I might also state that we have in connection with the Fairfield works a shearing shed driven by electricity generated by the works* engines. L t sea-or ». shore be tween 70,000 and 80,000 sheep. This would be impossible if the works were nut inland."