BRITISH COLD STORAGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1813, 13 April 1918, Page 4

BRITISH COLD STORAGE.

In a letter dealing with the scheme for increasing cold storage accommodation for food in the United Kingdom, Mr John Wardle, late Director of Cold Storage and Inland Transport at the Ministry of Food,-stated that it had been decided to increase the cold storage accommodation of the country by 10,000,000 cubic feet, or a capacity of 100.000 tons. A total of 3,500,000 cubic feet is being, or will be, provided, at a cost of £425,500, purely by private enterprise. More than 6.500.000 cubic feet, at an estimated cost of £716,000, is to be provided by private enterprise on the understanding that the Government generally provides by loan for the cost of insulation and machinery. The loan ife to be at the rate of 6 per

cent, per annum, the total amount to be repaid to the Government within five years from the declaration of peace. The only money proposed to be spent by the Government is £75,000, this being purely a war emergent measure for cold storage accommodation at Devonport, Plymouth. It will thus be seen that the provision of an additional' 10,000,000 cubic feet to our present cold storage capacity costing in the neighbourhood of £1,141,000, necessitates an actual expenditure of only £75,000 on the part of the Government. “I feel it is necessary to say,” Mr Wardle adds,” that the manner in which the cold storage proprietors, dock, canal, and other authorities have agreed to spend their own capital at a time when the cost of providing the increased cold storage accommodation is approximately 75 per cent, higher than in pre-war days, in order to help to carry on the Government policy, is a matter of congratulation to the cold storage industry and the various authoidties concerned, and their patriotism cannot be surpassed by any other body of the business community in the United Kingdom.”