BREWERIES’ EARNINGS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 2, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 14.

BREWERIES’ EARNINGS.

SOME idea of the quantity of malt liquors produced and sold in Great Britain, to take no note whatever of the imported beers sold and drunk, may be gained from the annual reports which have lately been published of the two great brewing companies, Guinness and Alsopp, says the New York Commercial Advertiser.

Guinness paid as beer duty for the year £864,000, approximately $4,320,000. The item of income tax on the business amounted to £11,000 “extra,” so the report reads. In addition £100,000 has been placed to the reserve fund, £30,000 to the depreciation fund, and a 9 per cent dividend, with a 4 per cent bonus added, has been paid. The sum of £48,562 was carried over as surplus.

The Alsopp report shows a deficiency and a decrease in the original value of the concern of nearly $10,000,000 on a capital of about $22,000,000. This is attributed partly to bad investments in “public houses,” of which the company had as many as thirty-one, including some large hotels, and to an attempt to make lager beer, in which field the company found powerful competition in the importation of German beer. From these figures an idea may be obtained of the vast capital invested in beer and breweries in England, those named being only two of the companies engaged in the business, although they are the largest.