COMPANY MEETING
LONDON ASIATIC RUBBER AND PRODUCE COMPANY
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING THE annual general meeting of the London Asiatic Rubber & Produce Company, Limited, was held in London on June 25th. In his address to the members the chairman said: We have recently sold an outlying block of 266 acres of 33-year-old rubber, the soil of which was unsuitable for replanting. The area was 266 acres planted, with 271 acres of reserve land unsuitable for growing rubber, and the price realised was £10,850. It is proposed to re-invest part or the whole of this money by purchasing shares in good rubber- growing companies, which will give this company, we believe, a more valuable interest in planted land than it possessed in the division which has been sold.
If our recommendations concerning dividend, &c., are adopted, the issued capital will then represent £30 is. tid. per planted acre. But it includes net surplus liquid assets of £340,092, so that the net cost is just over £19 per planted acre, the lowest ever recorded for the company.
Though the demand for rubber was sluggish at the beginning of the war period it developed rapidly, chiefly because the Government of the United States followed a policy of building up large reserve supplies of rubber in that country. These demands were readily met by relaxation of the restriction of output which has been in force by International Agreement since 1934, and as a result our accountable crop for 1940 was 11,855,000 lbs. against 8,231,000 lbs. for 1939, and its average sale price was about id. per lb. higher, but no less than £125,000 has been set aside for Excess Profits Tax, reducing our credit balance for the year to £164,618.
The directors recommend transfer of ,C15,000 to general reserve and of an equal sum to raise the dividend equalisation reserve from £35,000 to £50,000. The latter reserve will be used without hesita- tion when occasion arises. The final dividend of 6 per cent. recom- mended will, if approved, make the total for the year to per cent., as in each of the last two years. The sum remaining to be carried forward will then be £83,033, or very slightly more than the figure of a year ago.
The forward sales made for 1941 amounted to 1,104 tons at prices averaging just over I id. per lb. London equivalent. No sales have been made for 1942 delivery.
The accounts were adopted unanimously.
Previous page
