Lipton Tea

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Sir Thomas Lipton Agents Announce Plans for Construction of Big Warehouses in This City

Negotiations Under Way to Make This Port the Center of Distribution in Western World

Negotiations were practically completed yesterday by E. Hope Pearse, South American representative for Sir Thomas Lipton, for the erection in San Francisco of a huge tea-packing plant, costing several hundred thousand dollars. Plans have been drawn and a site is expected to be decided upon within a few days.

Pearse also is engaged in centralizing in this city Lipton's entire western hemisphere interests, which have greatly increased during recent months, he announced, because of the submarine menace in the Atlantic.

TRADE COMES HERE.

Twelve months ago nearly all Lipton's products were being shipped via New York, but this trade has now been diverted to the Pacific.

Efforts are also being made by Pearse to interest local shipping firms in establishing a direct steamship line to South American ports, supplying Brazil, Uruguay and the Argentine. He has given assurance that the Lipton interests are prepared at this time to export $1,000,000 worth of tea annually to these points, Pearse said yesterday.

PLAN IS FAVORED.

"Under this new proposition our entire importation of tea from China would be landed at this port and
distributed from here. The total volume of business, of course, would be enormous. I have talked with shipping companies in San Francisco, and have received encouragement."

Pearse, who has been staying at the Palace Hotel this week, will leave for Valparaiso to-day on the steamer, San Jose, which also carries 400 tons of Lipton's Chicago products for transshipment from Valparaiso, over the mountains to Buenos Aires. He will return to San Francisco at an early date.

Source: San Francisco Examiner, 04 May 1918, page 4.