HARRISONS AND CROSFIELD
THE RUBBER POSITION
THE thirty-seventh ordinary general meeting of Harrisons and Crostield, Limited, was held on October 3oth in London.
Mr. H. Eric Miller (the chairman) reviewed the position in the company's Eastern territories that were occupied by the Japanese, and explained why it was not yet possible to present any authoritative picture of what had happened to the rubber and the tea plantations, but said that as regard rubber, at any rate, the damage done appeared to be less serious than would have been the case had it been necessary to recover the country by fighting through it. It was fair to assume that the process of cleaning up and rehabilitation should not be difficult once the necessary labour and replace- ments were available. The urgent need to secure increased supplies of natural rubber as soon as possible had been emphasised by manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic, and a Rubber Purchasing Unit was amongst the earliest arrivals in Singapore, after its liberation, to acquire and ship from Malaya such stocks of natural rubber as were to be found out there and to encourage local production. as far as circumstances permitted. The output of synthetic substitutes in the U.S.A. and Canada during 1944 amounted to nearly 800,000 tons, and might reach t,000,000 tons in 1945. It was, however, generally conceded that none of these synthetics was equal to natural rubber for tyre construction, which was far and away the largest use to which rubber was put. It would be out of order for him to speculate today upon matters which were appropriate for considera-• Lion by the Rubber Study Group, but he was sure that the interests of natural rubber would be properly represented. Its own inherent qualities were the best assurance for its future.
The past twelve months had been uneventful for the tea trade, which had pursued the even tenor of its way. The termination of the war and the gradual liberation of the Far Eastern territories where the company had such widespread interests occasioned profound thankfulness, as did the fact that, in spite of being deprived of revenue from those sources, they were able to show substantially higher profits, and felt justified in recommending an increased dividend on the Deferred Ordinary Stock of t5 per cent. for the year, as against the reduced figure of to per cent. distributed for each of the previous three years.
The report was adopted.
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