More Visits To N.Z. By U.K. Manufacturers Urged

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30143, 29 May 1963, Page 17

More Visits To N.Z. By U.K. Manufacturers Urged

Too many manufacturers in Great Britain were sitting behind their desks instead of getting out and selling, said the new senior British Trade Commissioner, Mr J. L. Reading, in Christchurch yesterday. He was speaking at a welcome given to him by the Canterbury Manufacturers’

Association, on the occasion of his first official visit to the South Island. ‘Time and time again, I have come up against this,” he said. “Our manufacturers

don’t come out particularly to New Zealand, as frequently as they should. They only know what we (the trade commissioners* can tell them.” The British manufacturers, he said, by coming out themselves could go into trade detail that the trade commissioners themselves could not go into. “We trade commissioners are not salesmen. They must

sell it We can only help them. We can give them basic information. They must know that if they don’t know how to sell, they won’t make a profit” The past president of the Manufacturers' Association, Mr J. K. Dobson, said the individual manufacturer had to get out and sell his product with the help of the trade commissioners. In replying to remarks made by Mr Reading on Monday and reported in yesterday’s issue of “The Press,” Mr Dobson said that Canterbury manufacturers found it hard to “get down to examples” of inefficient New Zealand industries. In Monday’s interview with a reporter, Mr Reading had said that if New Zealand went in for industrialisation in the widest possible field, industries would become uneconomic.