The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1964. Eastern Markets For Dairy Products

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30541, 9 September 1964, Page 16

The Press WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1964. Eastern Markets For Dairy Products

It is disturbing that the chairman of the New Zealand Dairy Production and Marketing Board (Sir Andrew Linton), after a trip to the Far East, appears to have second thoughts about the prospects of finding profitable markets there. (In a later statement, Sir Andrew Linton has made it clear that when he expressed doubt about the commercial value of “ new ” markets in the Far East he did not mean that all markets in the Far East were “ new ” markets.) It is less than three years since the board’s overseas dairy products processing operations began with the production and sale of sterilised milk in Singapore. In its report for the year ended May 31, 1962, the board said that the plant (after six months’ operations) had “already proved a commercial success”. This was encouraging, “especially in view of a number of “similar projects in different countries that are in “different stages of planning”. During 1962-63 the board opened further processing plants, in Hong Kong and Mauritius, and planned a new venture in Barbados. In that year, also, the-board concluded negotiations in Thailand for a plant in Bangkok, which was opened this year.

In his 1962-63 report, Sir Andrew Linton warned readers that the possession of processing plants overseas did not automatically ensure for New Zealand “ a vast progressive increase in sales of milk solids. “ Milk and milk products do not as yet have any “ place in the diets of countless millions of people. “ The taste for our products has got to be created “ and stimulated in Asia, Africa, and other develop- “ ing regions. It is not there already, waiting to “be exploited. Progress in this tremendously impor- “ tant campaign will, in the board’s view, be largely “by educating the taste of the younger people, “ particularly schoolchildren, in the milk-deficient “ countries ”. All this is, of course, as true today as it was last year. So is the Concluding sentence of the passage: “The campaign will be necessarily a slow “one, requiring sustained effort based on quality “ products, adequate and attractive packaging, and “ the educative effect of supporting publicity designed “specifically for the rising generation of Asian “peoples, who offer the market potential to absorb “ the expanding production of our dairy industry ”,

The main change in New Zealand’s overseas markets for dairy products since this passage was written last year is the dramatic recovery in the United Kingdom butter market, which must certainly have made other products, and other markets, “ relatively unattractive ”. However, if the production of sterilised milk in Singapore was a commercial success two years ago, before the “taste for our “ products ” had been “ created and stimulated ”, it should still be a success today. Before the board reduces its efforts in Asia it should convince producers that the 1958 and 1961 slumps in the British butter market cannot occur again.