Csr Figures Not S[?]

Profit Down: Loss in Fiji

Sweet, After All

By a Staff Reporter

A heavy loss in Fiji was one « the main reasons for a fall in pro j of Colonial Sugar Refining Co. Ltd Sydney, by £276,899 to £2,605,72 for the year ended March 31 .It wf the first decline in 10 years.

THE company issued consolidate accounts for the first time, o July 3, and those who regarded CS as another Aladdin’s Cave, and having untold hidden assets and n serves, were disappointed.

Certainly, fixed assets at £77 mi lion in the consolidated accounts ai well up on the parent compam £5l million last year, and reserv in four years have risen from ; million to around £36 millii (though the board cautions the pu lie against comparing items on tJ new balance sheet with previa years’ figures until the chairman i veals details at the annual meetii on July 19).

But buyers who pushed the £: shares up to £9l by mid-June anticipation of a bonanza were d illusioned. In a wave of selling, CS shares receded after July 3 to £7 They rallied a little, to £77/10/-,, week later.

Group profits (sugar, plus su sidiaries manufacturing buildir materials and chemicals) we £2,617,735, reached after tax £2,086,203, replacement and dep( ciation of £3,710,817, and deduct! of minority shareholders’ interes of £160,991. £llO Million Assets Assets of the group total £1 million—and these produced o;« £2.6 million. As one commentaf said, “The company laboured migs ily in 1960-61, for mighty littl: Asset backing is about £7O per shs Dividend of 9 per cent, for parent company was covered times. The rate is the same as previous year.

Financial opinion is that the slur is only temporary for CSR—bei; results are expected from Fiji tr year (though directors admit pn pects remain “obscure”); builds materials, hit by the Austral economic squeeze since last Nov©' ber, should move more freely soc

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and new chemical projects being established should prove profitable later on. The potential of the com pany is there, if the assets can be made to work effectively.

Higher Fiji Quota

CSR announced in Fiji in early July that, provided a cane contract is signed, a 25 per cent, increase for 1962 season will be made in the amount of sugar cane purchased from growers.

Last year’s quota was sufficient to produce 190,000 tons of sugar. In

March, the company announced it proposed to mill 235,000 tons in the coming season; this latest increase raises the figure to 250,000 tons.

The announcement was designed to give notice to farmers of the in crease in proposed milling, so that they can plant extra cane now.

CSR officials have expressed con cern at the comparatively small amount of planting done so far, and have urged farmers to plant as soon as possible.

By issuing the notice in three lan guages, CSR has gone a long way to improve the public relations aspect which was criticised so much last year.

Cane Planting Still

Lagging

From our Fiji Correspondent Pulled this way and that by the tensions of cold warfare, terrorism, intimidation and insidious advice, the cane farmers of Fiji are still lagging in their planting for the 1961/62 cane crop.

F CURES issued by the CSR in late June show that although some districts, notably Penang, have much increased their planting since the crush started in the first week of June, all are much behind the required acreage.

Lautoka mill area extends from Sigatoka to a point halfway to Ba.

Planting to date shows only 1,229 acres planted out of 13,000, less than 10 per cent. Penang, formerly at the lowest level, has soared to 34 per

cent. These two areas are the home of the anti-CSR faction.

Other districts are better: Rarawai 44 per cent., Labasa 66 per cent., but the whole picture is dismal.

About 22,000 acres remained un planted as on June 21 and it is hard to forecast whether they will be planted. There is still no date for the Sugar Commission Report.

Talking to farmers in the North west, I find that all the opposition to cane planting is not confined to the opponents of the CSR. A surprising number of the “friendly” farmers are hanging off planting.

They give, mostly, two reasons: Fear of reprisals, and dissatisfaction with the CSR idea of tonnage instead of acreage quotas.

This may prove to be the rock upon which future negotiations crash, for it is hard to convince these farmers that the tonnage allocation is the only basis upon which the mills can fore cast milling capacity.