DAIRY FARM POKFULUM
Continuation.
After a number of vicissitudes, the Dairy Farm's policy of importing high-grade milch cows triumphed, and it steadily developed until its present big-scale operations were attained.
In 1896, however, there was an outbreak of rinderpest in the Colony, and the company's whole herd was affected, this bringing the enterprise to an end for the time being. However, the spirit behind the concern was not dismayed; the company was reconstructed under the chairmanship of Dr. J. W. Noble,
who had joined the directorate of the old company the previous year. Mr. James Walker was appointed manager of the new concern and Mr. W. Hutton Potts the secretary. Mr. Walker was associated with the Dairy Farm for thirty years, up to 1919, having come out to join it in 1890 and being made manager of the old concern in 1892.
By 1900 the Dairy Farm had started well on the road to profitable progress, and has never looked back. In its opening up of the Pokfulum neighbourhood over thirty years ago, the company aided the island development to no small extent, and in this connection, the name of Dr. Noble is deservingly associated.
Further stages in the development of this modern dairy farm, of which Hongkong can boast, included the taking over of the frozen meat importing business from Messrs. Butterfield and Swire in 1904, at that time a business largely connected with supplying His Majesty's forces. It was as recently as 1918 that the original Hongkong Ice Company at East Point (founded in 1880) was merged into the Dairy Farm, the concern becoming thereafter known as the Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage Co. Ltd. Poultry and butchery departments are other features of the development of the concern.
272