W. R. Carpenter

His Remarkable Achievements in North America

IT is expected that the head of the Carpenter group of companies. Sir Walter Carpenter, will return from North America to Sydney very shortly, after his second lengthy visit there within a couple of years.

Even the critics and enemies of this remarkable man—and he has some—will admit that his achievements recently have been extraordinary. With foresight and cleverness, he has used the appar ently hopelessly unfavourable conditions created bv the war actually to strengthen the group of companies which he con trols.

In the last war W. R. Carpenter—then virtually unknown and unacknowledged —saw with clearer vision than most of his fellows, with the result that he got in early and bought copra wherever he could raise credit, and shipped copra to Europe in anything that would float.

His foresight was justified—in a very short time the warring world was crying out for copra as the basis of foodstuffs and munitions, and he reaped huge pro fits, and thus laid the foundations of the group of wealthy and prosperous companies which he now directs.

The present war opened with condi tions so unfavourable to the copra inter ests and allied trading companies, such as the Carpenter group, that there were some who forecast the ruin of all con cerns based on Pacific trade. In addi tion. the Carpenter firm lost, to the British Shipping Control Board, the three copra-carrying ships which it had so carefully acquired and operated in recent years.

Six months after war broke out, the uninstructed observer would have said that the prospects of the Carpenter group were very black, indeed.

But, see what has happened since.

Baulked of his European markets and deprived of his ships, Sir Walter Car penter went off to America. Somehow, he there purchased two more freighters, under conditions which allow him to operate them in the Pacific free of European control.

Then he formed a new company in Canada, commandiner sufficient capital to build a copra-crushing mill near Van couver, and he was able to find a healthy North American market for the products of the mill.

Furthermore—Heaven alone knows how, because the Commonwealth Government is very “difficult” in these days of con trolled exchange—he was able to trans fer to North America sufficient Carpen ter credit to maintain a controlling interest in the Canadian enterprise.

The position now is that, despite appar ently hopeless war conditions, Carpenter copra now can be moved from the Car penter plantations in the South Pacific Islands, in Carpenter ships, to a Car penter-controlled market in North Amer ica—an achievement of which W.R.C. may well be proud.

The engagement of Miss Joan Charl ton, daughter of the Hon. Raymond Charlton. Commissioner of Lands at Suva. Fiji, and the late Mrs. Charlton, and Mr. Archie Reid, aide-de-camp to Sir Harry Luke, Governor of Fiji, has been announced. Mr. Reid is also an ad ministrative officer in the Civil Service of Fiji.