Mr, E. W. Noel presided: last Friday at the second annual general meeting of the Pengkalan Durian Estate (1921), Ld., held at the offices of the secretaries and general managers, No. 1 The Bund. The total number of shares represented was 23,983.
In the course of his speech, the Chairman said:—The present com-Pay, as you are aware, commence: business on August 30, 1921, and the report and accounts cover the working for seven months only.
Production.—During the seven months this company has been in existence we harvested 93,760 Ib. The crop fell short of the estimate owing to considerable areas having to be rested on account of poor bark renewal and also to the fact that several of the fields have been tapped on an upper panel. The Jatter fact also partly explains the considerable fall in the yield per tapping.
It will be noted that our cost "all in" per Ib. works out at 40.19 cents (Singapore) against last year's cost of 54.83 cents. Every effort is being made still further to reduce the cost of our rubber; this, however, is a problem owing to the smallness of the estate and output, and to the difficulty of still further redycing already finely cut overhead charges. A comparatively small estate like Pengkalan cannot hope for such very sweeping reductions in "all in" cost as' have been possible when the yield per coolie is large
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.