COMPANY MEETING
WANKIE COLLIERY CO.
REVALUATION OF PROPERTIES HIGH QUALITY OF COMPANY'S COALS SIR EDMUND DAVIS'S SPEECH Tim fourteenth ordinary general meeting of the Wankie Colliery Company Limited, was held on Tuesday, November 30th, in London, Sir Edmund Davis (Chairman and Managing Director) said that the profit for the year amounted to L222,959. Three interim dividends, one of 6 per cent. and two of 5 per cent: each, had been paid, and it was now proposed to pay a final dividend of 4 per cent., leaving £16,145 to be carried forward.
During the year under review the board considered it advisable to have the properties and their equipment independently valued. They approached the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa Limited, and had received their report, in which they valued the collieries at £1,195,000. In this valuation they had taken a radius, so far as No. 1 Colliery was concerned, of two miles from the station at the bottom of the main hauling shaft, in which they estimated a tonnage of about 15,000,000 tons or within a three-mile radius an additional 28,000,000 tons, making a total of 43,000,000 tons of extractable coal, without any heavy capital outlay. In the No. 2 Colliery, within the same radius, it was estimated that the total avail- able coal to be worked under the same conditions, was about 352,000,000 tons. These valuations were based on 56 square miles out of their coalfield of 400. As a result of the revaluation they had written up the coal-mining and other rights from £489,763 to D,200,000, and the difference had been carried to a capital surplus account.
So far as the development and equipment of any outside property in Southern Rhodesia was concerned, he had read references in the Southern Rhodesian Press to speeches which had been made of late, especially so far as concerned the price of coal in Southern Rhodesia. In this connexion, no attention had apparently been paid, previous to making these remarks, to the extraordinary high value of Wankie coal compared with certain coals elsewhere in South Africa.
The report was unanimously adopted.
Previous page
