Coll 28/67 ‘Persia. Annual Reports, 1932–’ [‎43v] (86/644)

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Textile Mills.
470. In May the Legation learnt of an order, value at £22,000, placed with
Messrs. Fairbairn, Lawson, Combe, Barbour (Limited) of Leeds, for plant to be
installed in a jute-spinning and weaving mill in Resht. The same firm, towards
the end of the year, looked like securing an order worth £10,000 from the Shah
for a jute mill to be erected in Aliabad (Mazanderan).
471. The cotton-spinning mill in Aliabad, which was put up in 1931, and
equipped with German machinery under scandalous circumstances, was taken
over and extended by His Majesty in 1932, all the orders (to the value of
£54,000) going to British firms : Dobson and Barlow and Platt Brothers for
spinning and weaving plant, and the General Electric Company and Crossley
Brothers for electrical equipment.
472. The Shah, during the year, also expressed the intention of erecting a
woollen mill with 3,000 spindles in Kermanshah, and there is reason to hope that
the order (worth £20,000 to £30,000) will go to the United Kingdom.
473. Various schemes for putting up cotton-spinning mills in Meshed, Yezd
and Kerman hung fire rather—others were spoken of for Qum, Isfahan, Shiraz
and Bushire—but in every case there appeared to be a first-class chance of
British firms securing the orders for the required machinery in the event of the
mills materialising.
Sugar Factories.
474. The old sugar factory An East India Company trading post. built by a Belgian group at Kahrizak (about
12 miles south of Tehran) thirty-five years ago, and abandoned because the
Russians took care that other crops should pay the peasants better than beet, was
renovated with the help of German machinery on the initiative of the manager
of the National Bank during 1931—one imagines a hopelessly uneconomic pro
position—and officially opened by the Shah at the end of January 1932. It did
not, however, start to function until September.
475. The entirely new sugar factory An East India Company trading post. at Kerej (24 miles west of Tehran),
finally equipped by a Czechoslovakian factory An East India Company trading post. (Czeska Moravska), after the
Persian Government had taken some eighteen months to make up their minds to
whom they should give the order, was also opened by the Shah in the autumn. His
Majesty is said to have been so pleased with what he saw that he ordered a
similar plant to be ordered from the same suppliers for a third factory—with
more to follow.
476. The total yearly output of the Kahrizak and Kerej factories together,
which appear to have cost about £60,000 between them, is estimated at 7,000 tons,
or roughly 8^ per cent, of the quantity imported through the Persian customs in
recent years. The policy of the Government is to make Persia self-supporting
where this commodity is concerned.
Cement Factory An East India Company trading post. .
477. The necessary plant for a factory An East India Company trading post. to be constructed at Shah Abdul
Azim, a few miles south of Tehran, was ordered from a Danish-Swedish concern.
Details are lacking.
Tehran Electric Power Scheme.
478. The Societe de Traction et d’Electricite of Brussels obtained a con
cession in September to supply Tehran with electric power, and also, apparently,
to introduce an up-to-date tramway system in the capital, to replace the
antiquated horse-drawn vehicles run by another Belgian company, and extend it
to Shimran, the summer station situated a few miles north of Tehran. The agree
ment was finally signed in December or early in the New Year, in spite of the
cancellation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s Concession and the serious mis
givings it caused the Belgian Minister.
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