Tuesday at the 12th annual general meeting of shareholders in the Lih Teh Oil Mill Ca., Ld., held at the offices of the secretaries, 2 Canton Road. Supporting the Chairman were Mr. H. J. Burrett, Mr. L. Straetmans and Mr. Liu Chang-yin (directors) and Mr. E, A. Prince (representing the secretaries). The attendance represented 1,938
In his speech, the Chairman said Our financial year started with good prospects. During June and August, seeds were plentiful and the price very reasonable and good profits were made. In September the supply of cotton seeds fell off and the quality was poor. The new season seed market was opened by a Chinese oil mill at an advance in price of over 60 per cent., thus establishing a market price which made crushing unprofitable—this concern bought heavily at high prices-and later on in the season became bankrupt.
The season started as explained above, with very dear seeds and throughout the season seeds have been very scarce and the quality has been consistently bad and thus instead of operating our mill throughout the whole year, we have only been able to run for 145 days. There was a good demand for both our cake and oil throughout the season which we could not) supply owing to the shortage of seeds and since this company was started in 1910 we have never experienced such a shortage of seeds of sound quality.
Other oil seeds were held by Chinese merchants at high prices above their crushing value and thus we were unable to turn the mill from cotton seeds to the profitable crushing of other seeds.
The machinery has been kept in good order and has worked satisfactorily and the sum of Tls, 12,398.20 has been spent on repairs and re-newels and charged to working account.
The accounts do not call for any special comment. The mortgage loan against residence Rue Henri Riviere has since been paid off and the stock of Ts. 94,109.86 represents chiefly goods which have been sold and cleared since.
The profit for the year is Ts. 4,564.20, which it is proposed. to deduct from the debit balance of Tls. 24,763.43 which was carried forward from last year, thus carrying forward a debit to profit and loss account of Tls. 20,199.23.
There was no discussion, and the formal resolutions were carried.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.