OUR "CHEAP BUTTER."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 114, 17 May 1933, Page 5

OUR "CHEAP BUTTER."

ENGLISH RETAIL PRICES. NEW ZEALAND PUZZLED. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, tills day. While he was successfully placing Southland silver beech on the English market, where it will be in demand for motor body building, Mr. Robert Bauchop, a well-known Southland sawmiller, was constantly concerned to see New Zealand butter displayed in the shops of the Homeland marked as low as 9d per lb, while alongside it, and selling readily, wae the Danish product priced up to 1/6. It was a matter for constant wonder, Mr. Bauchop said on his return to Wellington this week. He made many inquiries into the anomalous position, and found that there are a good many problems involved, including that of difficulty in spreading New Zealand butter in the winter.

"But one must say that our butter 3s too cheap," he declared. "I got an opinion from a business man with large interests (not, however, in dairy products), and. he told me that when his people saw butter priced so low as 10d a lb, they thought that it must be an inferior article to that of Danish, priced at 1/6. And I must eay that I agree with him. Of course, one realises how heavy production is depressing prices, but the Danish producer ie getting his superior price, and no doubt that ie to some extent explained by the regularity of delivery and his ability to provide a very freeh product. And it spreads very easily."