NEW FREIGHTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 211, 7 September 1933, Page 15

NEW FREIGHTS.

In 1932 the dairy farmers paid £1,264,000 in freighte. alone to convey their, goods for sale to the farthest end of the world and the graziers £2,250,000. In 1933 the freights for butter and cheese will probably reach £1,500,000 because they now will have to pay the increase not only for the ever-growing volume of cargo offered, but for the high exchange allowed by produce boards to be attached—some £225.000 extra. Farmers can now expect a saving of £124,000 on the £1,500,000 of dairy freights. This is a failure to negotiate reasonable and acceptable rates of freights at a time when huge tonnage is available freely and ie obviously in excess of require-' ments. We are told that the basic rate for freights is the inflated rate of 19251930 (4/), while the basic rate undoubtedly is the normal pre-war rate (2/(3), so that the latest new freights arranged are now 1/1.1 over and above the normal one, reaching the amazing figure of 3/7.102 per box. The New Zealand dairy fanners, compelled from all quarters to accept prices much lower than those ruling; before the war (lowest for 25 years) are now called for to pay voyages both waye in favour of British shippers. Three years' contract is signed at exorbitant rates with a combine, engrossing the whole of New Zealand shipping and. precluding , any possibility of either calling tenders or organising national tonnage. A serious blow is inflicted on our industry and incidentally upon the "free" trade with Britain. Such things always happen, and will happen, in a country which is loudly proclaiming everywhere that she has only one market in the wide world and only one way to reach it. ALEXANDER S. TETZNER.