PORK SAUSAGES

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27669, 27 May 1955, Page 7

PORK SAUSAGES

COMPARISON WITH' PRICES

IN AUCKLAND “Christchurch retailers are certainly not making 5d per lb on pork sausages,” said a spokesman for a local firm of sausage manufacturers yesterday, when asked to comment on an Auckland report that pork sausages, bought at Is 8d per lb, were being sold at 2s Id per lb or even more.

Pork sausages are sold in Christchurch at Is 9d or Is lOd per lb by butchers, delicatessen, and mixedsuburban businesses. These prices have been unaltered in spite of the recent drop in pork prices, for months. Six organisations—three of them have direct interests in a number' of butcheries —make most of the pork sausages sold in Christchurch. Representatives of several of these organisations who were interviewed yesterday were reluctant to divulge the retailers’ “mark-up” on sausages, but they said that South Island manufacturers, in spite of having to pay higher prices for their pork, could still turn out a cheaper product that North Island firms. It .is the amount of labour, not the amount of pork, in a pork sausage, which is the main factor in the cost of production. Wages and overhead costs are said to-be lower in the South -Island, but the Christchurch retailers both butchers and delicatessens—are apparently content with a lower- profit than those in Auckland.