BUTTER PRICES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 300, 19 December 1934, Page 9

BUTTER PRICES.

SPECULATION BARRED

LONDON IMPORT CONTROL REPLY TO CRITICISM. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. Interviewed regarding a cable message in to-day's paper referring to an advertisement by the linn of Aplin and Barrett, which contends that the margin in the price between Danish and Empire butters in due to legislative measures and to importers having been barred from speculative buying. Mr. W. A. loins, chairman of the Dairy Board, said the so-called ''legislative" measures referred to were evidently the agreement for more orderly marketing, which had been come to between the United Kingdom Importers' Association and the Dairy Board, and under which importers handling Xew'Zealand butter and cheese on consignment undertook not to speculate in New''Zealand butter and cheese. This stipulation had been recognised by the Dairy Commission as very desirable and had been approved by the importers themselves.

Mr. loins said that wholesale importers and merchants, such as Aplin and Barrett, were not prevented from speculative buying If they desired to operate, and no connection could be proved between the marketing regulation referred to and the price of Danish butter, as the difference in price between Danish and New Zealand butters 12 months ago, when no regulations existed, was practically the same as to-day. The supply of Danish butter largely determined its price, and, with Danish butter in very short supply to-day, the margin between it and New Zealand was correspondingly large. The firm whose advertisement was referred to was strongly opposed to tile institution of a marketing order in which Dominion interests sought to make it compulsory to mark New Zealand and Australian butters with the name of the country of origin. This "firm consistently refrained from advertising New Zealand and Australian butter as such and was one of the largest, if not. the largest, blenders of butter in Great Britain. The DairyBoard considered that one way in which the margin in price between New Zea- ; laud and Danish could be lessened was by New Zealand butter being sold under its own name.