Export Lamb Schedule Price Dropped By 1½d

Press, Volume C, Issue 29674, 18 November 1961, Page 10

Export Lamb Schedule Price Dropped By 1½d

(NZ. Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 17. The export lamb schedule price payable by freezing works to farmers will drop Ifd a lb in all grades as from Monday. Further drops are expected in succeeding weeks. , The schedule for the week is not normally officially announced until Monday, but the fact that a drop is to be made was confirmed today by works’ executives. The works have already informed their buyers.

This is the first drop since the opening schedule was announced on October 19. A decrease has been expected, but the severity of the cut in one week has come as a shock, even to members of the meat trade. It will mean that a lamb killing out at 281 b will be worth 3s 6d less to the farmer, a substantial drop in income on a draft of, say, 200 lambs.

It was said today that the drop of Ijd would bring the schedule close to floor price level and that any further drops would, therefore, mean the introduction of the deficiency payment. This is the biggest single

) over a period of three weeks ; would have cushioned the blow. i He said big works -in the lower half of the North • Island had obviously applied I pressure to maintain the i schedule, in case their flow of i lambs was slowed up.

decrease that members of the meat trade can remember in a long time. They said it might have some serious repercussions. A spokesman for one section of the trade in Auckland said successive decreases in the schedule of a Jd per lb