MILK VENDING MACHINES MADE IN CHRISTCHURCH

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29068, 3 December 1959, Page 11

MILK VENDING MACHINES MADE IN CHRISTCHURCH

Self-service milk vending machines will be put into two factories, one in Christchurch, the other in Wellington, next week as an experiment designed to boost milk sales.

The machines have been made in a Christchurch engineering works specialising in coinactuated machines. One is going to a Wellington stationery manufacturing firm, the other to a big clothing factory in Christchurch.

The New Zealand Milk Board, with the assistance in Christchurch of the Christchurch Milk Company, is producing the machines, each of which will hold 176 half-pint bottles of milk at a controlled temperature of about 42 degrees.

The sale of milk from vending machines is a common practice overseas, but New Zealand conditions present their own problems, mainly because milk is not filled into sealed cartons here.

The machine decided on by the Milk Board is fitted with a liftup lid in which about half the bottles are suspended by their necks from stainless steel rails. The remainder are stored below. When a bottle of milk is required, the customer grasps the neck and guides it to a circular aperture at one end of the cabinet, from which it cannot be withdrawn until a coin is inserted in the slot. Milk will cost 4d a bottle, and the machine, designed by Mr W. J. Edlin in Christchurch, has been made to take 6d and return 2d in change. It will also reject spurious coins. , ; r*But the English system of selling milk in cartons from vending machines may come to New Zealand, for the Canterbury Dairy

Farmers’ Ltd., is experimenting.

The Milk Board believes that the experience overseas will be reflected in New ' Zealand and bottle losses will be negligible. No allowance for the bottle is being made in the charge. But if the experimental use of the machines shows that bottle losses are heavy, then it is doubtful whether any type of bottle vending machine will be successful in New Zealand, particularly as empty bottles have a higher value in New Zealand than they have in England. It is proposed that machines will be let by treatment stations to resellers who will buy the milk which goes through the machine. The treatment station will deliver milk to the machine, load it, be responsible for seeing that an attached straw dispenser is kept full,.collect and remove empties and unsold bottles and ensure that the coin mechanism is loaded with change. Milk vending machines are much more common in the United States than in Britain, where they have only “caught on” in the last year or two. It is estimated that there are 50,000 milk selling machines in the United States and about 1000 in Britain.