Dredges

Bulolo GD Now Working Seven Dredges Annual Report Shows Co’s.

Enormous Strength

THE Canadian-owned Bulolo Gold Dredging Limited —which is easily the most successful and most effici ently managed industrial concern ever established in Melanesia —made a profit in the year ended May 31, 1948, of 1,677,000 dollars. These were the best figures since the Jap invasion of New Guinea in 1942, but it is far from the average of the an nual profit made in the halcyon ’thirties.

In the last complete year (1941) before the coming of the Japs, the profit was just under 4,000,000 dollars—on a subscribed capital of 5,000,000 dollars!

While most New Guinea enterprises were either wringing their hands or sub mitting to the innumerable frustrations of the Wardist regime, this energetic direc torate in 1945-46 simply refused to be baffled by bureaucracy and proceeded, somehow or other, to refloat its eight sunken dredges and rebuild two of its three blasted hydro-electric stations. It got two dredges into operation in the 1947 period; four more in the year under re view; a seventh began work on June 25 last; and the eighth, which had been buried under 20 feet of gravel, will re commence working within a few months.

A truly remarkable achievement, consider ing the enormous difficulties of transport and of getting new plant and material.

In view of the ever-increasing costs of labour and material, the Company has revised and considerably reduced its esti mates of its reserves of “dredgeable” gravels. This means a reduced life for the Company.

But the Company is making proper pro vision for its possibly limited life. It has no less than 3 million dollars in its amor tisation fund (all in cash) and quite a few more millions of dollars tucked away in various forms (some 3 million dollars are to be received from the Australian War Damage Commission in war damage com pensation). If BGD were to walk out of New Guinea to-morrow, its shareholders would get back the whole of their capital —possibly, double the amount.

IT is interesting to note that in the year under review, the Company won gold worth about £BOO,OOO (\Aust.), and the Administration got about £58,000 of it, in royalty and “Australian gold tax.’’ Apart from the taxes, the Company spent nearly a quarter-million pounds in the Territory.

Yet this Company represents, par excel lence, the “exploiters” so hated by the Wardist regime.

It was reported by the directors that testing for new ground in the Korosameri River and Tinai Creek areas had been abandoned, and the prospects of finding further dredgeable ground in New Guinea were “rather slim.”

They reported also that, while the road from Lae to Bulolo had been improved, it was still unreliable alongside some ten miles of the lower part of the Markham River, and it still was necessary to use air transport for much of their supplies.

The Government had promised to bridge the river above the unreliable portion, which would mean that the road from Lae would go some miles up the eastern side of the Markham, before crossing over to the western bank: but this would provide a reliable road. In the meantime, most equipment would have to be flown in.

I— m —■■ ■ Inspector General of French Colonies, M. Lasalle-Sere a member of the South Pacific Commission, arrived at Papeete on a short visit in November, in an .American plane, from Noumea.