PRICE OF WOOLPACKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1936, Page 8

PRICE OF WOOLPACKS.

REGULATIONS ANNOUNCED. LOWER RATES TO USERS. (Ry a Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON*, Thursday. The Board of Trade (Wool packs) Regulations, fixing the price of woolpacks, are announced .in the Gazette to-night. They provide the maximum price at which a wool pack may be sold to a purchaser purchasing for his own use, and not for the purposes of resale, for delivery on board boat or on rail or ex store at the following ports: —Auckland, Wellington, Lyttelton, Dunedin, Timaru and Bluff. The prices are fixed at 3/4 for a wool pack 42 b v 27 by 2" inchqs, 3/7 for a wool pack 4S by 27 by 27 inches, and 3/10 for a woolpack 54 by 27 by 27 inches. In the ease of sale for delivery at any other point than one of those mentioned, the price fixed shall be increased by a sum equal to the reasonable cost of transporting sucli woolpack to the point of delivery. Xo person slial sell any woolpack at a proce other than the respective prices specified unless he is satisfied on reasonable grounds that the purchaser is acquiring tlio woolpack for purposes of resale and not for his own use.

Last year farmers and other users of New Zealand woolpacks were charged 3/G for the 42-inch pack and 3/0 for the 48-inch pack, the prices now fixed being 2d lower. In order to assist the New Zealand woolpack industry; the Government is insisting 011 the use in the coming season of one flax pack in every three packs used. This means* that New z^ealand Woolpack and Textiles, Limited, Foxton, is expected to supply one-third of the Dominion's requirements, against 18 per cent last year. Normally, between 800,000 and 300,000 packs are used in New Zealand each year. Owing to pricecutting in the jute ft*ade in India, imported packs are now cheaper thin for several years. A jute pack can be landed in New Zealand for about 2/7 upward. It is believed that the prices of local packs to the stock firms will be raised this year by about 5d a pack, to "d under the maximum rates fixed for sale to users. This margin is totally insufficient to pay handling costs, and it is presumed that the stock firms will be permitted to retain the margin of profit on the jute packs in order to make up the loss 011 the New Zealand packs.