'No Optimism Warranted Over Meat Marketing9

Press, Volume C, Issue 29682, 28 November 1961, Page 15

'No Optimism Warranted Over Meat Marketing 9

It was the right and privilege of producers to sell tiieir lambs on their own account, Mr C. P. Agar, chairmen of the New Zealand Refrigerating Company, told farmers last week. However, he asked that they give some consideration to the type of distributing and marketing organisation which would handle their meat on the other side of the world. He warned that if the organisation did not have the necessary distributing facilities it might only be able to sell by price cutting. It was the week seller who dealt a blow to the market. Mr Agar described the type of organisation in which his company and two others were associated in Britain. He said that it bad more than 60 branches or depots and was in direct trading contact with the people who sold meat It had bought a carriers’ business and was also building a 1000-ton cold store in Liverpool. It had been the first to get into the field of meat cuts. It had been criticised because it also handled poultry and rabbits, but this was done because by selling poultry it sold meat and maintained trade connexions. Mr Agar said the companies had had ‘‘a hiding” last year. The New Zealand companies were not as strong as their overseas counterparts. If the Dominion companies were in trouble the producers would also be in

trouble. “United we stand —divided we fall.” It was not a time to talk with optimism, he said. The most recent cable from Britain had reported another id fall in the price of lamb and the turnover of meat was about half whet it should be. Mr Agar raid the opening price paid to New Zealand farmers for lamb this seaeon was “too high and utterly ridiculous.” He also suggested that killing charges were too low at present and that an inquiry would prove this. Mr W. M. Cletend, general manager of the New Zeeland Refrigerating Company, said that no-one in the industry welcomed low schedules for they realised thal if the farmers were doing well the industry was also doing well. The schedule of today or next week, he said, was an assessment by exporters of whet meat would be bringing in three or four months. If producers regarded it as not high enough they had alternative ways of selling their meat