CHILLED BEEF EXPORTS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27489, 25 October 1954, Page 10

CHILLED BEEF EXPORTS

PROSPECTS FOR N.Z. TRADE MOST SHIPMENTS FROM NORTH ISLAND (From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, October 24. Most of the beef shipped from New Zealand this year to Britain will be chilled beef. Experimental shipments of beef totalling 69,946 quarters were sent last season, with such success that the estimated exports this season will be 275,000 quarters. Trade authorities said in Wellington yesterday that most of the beef shipped would be from Auckland, Wellington. apd to a minor extent, New Plymouth and Napier. Any South Island chilled beef would be exported through Lyttelton. The first ship carrying lamb for the Christmas market will sail from New Zealand for Britain on November 9, and will arrive on December 14.

The change to chilled beef exports by New Zealand companies is dictated by the market in England, where chilled beef is preferred to frozen meat.

Complicating factors are the British dock strike and the availability of shipping. New Zealand shipping agents have agreed to provide the necessary space, and the Railways Department sufficient waggons to transport the meat, but unless it is unloaded immediately on arrival in Britain, entire shipments are liable to be wasted. The meat may be saved if it is unloaded and frozen immediately, but because of the present English industrial trouble, that is not likely. The optimum transport time for chilled beef is 40 days, although recently 50-day voyages have not detrimentally affected the meat. With the almost complete cessation of Argentine shipments to Britain, New Zealand is in a very good position to claim a market for herself with chilled beef, and exporters in the Dominion are doing all they can to facilitate the rapid delivery of the meat.