THE NORTHWARD EXPANSION 445
the
Chfngola and N'Changa mining grants, in which area was situated the
N'Changa West Mine, and certain contiguous mining grants; further it
acquired the King Edward Mine, situated near Lusaka.
The
capitalization was £5 million, divided into 5,000,000 shares. Of these,
2,000,000 were acquired by Rhokana, as vendors. It was, of course,
still necessary to find funds for working capital. Rhokana put up
-£400,000 in return for additional shares. The balance was found by
offering shares at par to the shareholders in Rhokana: they acquired a
property with a then estimated ore reserve of 144 million tons of ore
with an estimated copper content of 4*66 per cent. Rhoanglo as owners
of 1,340,000 shares in Rhokana took up a similar number of shares in
the N'Changa company, part of which holding was traded off to Anglo
American Corporation. Ernest Oppenheimer told the shareholders: 'I am
satisfied that in due course N'Changa Consolidated Copper Mines Limited
will take its place among the large successful copper producers of the
world', a prophecy which the future was amply to justify.
♦ XVII ♦
Among
the earliest interests of Anglo American Corporation in Northern
Rhodesia had been a shareholding in Rhodesia Broken Hill Development
Company: indeed the earliest offices of Anglo American Corporation had
been established at Broken Hill, the corporation having become
consulting engineers and Ernest Oppenheimer a director, Edmund Davis
being chairman and managing director. The company had had a chequered
career in the past, but when the association with Anglo American
Corporation took place, a vigorous policy of expansion was decided
upon. Speaking to the shareholders of Anglo American Corporation on 22
May 1926, Ernest Oppenheimer told them:
The
company started its career as a lead producer, but the potentialities
of its large deposits of zinc ores were always kept in view. After
extensive laboratory experiments, confirmed by results obtained in a
pilot plant which has been operated on a commercial scale, a
satisfactory process has been evolved, and the company is at present
engaged in building its zinc plant. The process, besides extracting the
zinc from the complex ore, also enables the vanadium contents to be
recovered. These will be marketed as ferro-vanadium, and are expected
to add very substantially to the profits made on the zinc. The quality
of the zinc produced in the pilot plant has been most
