Cheap Newsprint May Affect N.Z. Export

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30761, 27 May 1965, Page 10

Cheap Newsprint May Affect N.Z. Export

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SYDNEY, May 26. The threat to the balance of payments position in Australia and New Zealand posed by the Canadian newsprint price war was expected to loom large in talks expected to take place soon between the Australian and New Zealand Governments on economic matters, the Australian “Financial Review” said today. “The New Zealand Government is concerned at its continuing trade deficit with Australia now running at some £6O million a year,” it said. “It looks to the continuance of its newsprint export trade with Australia to help keep the deficit within bounds.

This trade runs at a present level of £lO million a year and in conditions of normal competition could eventually be at a much higher level,” it said. A Canadian price war in newsprint designed to preserve Canada’s expanding export market was, however.

threatening major expansion of newsprint-making facilities in Australia and New Zealand.

The two companies making paper in Australia and New Zealand now supplied about 60 per cent of Australian consumption of newsprint now running at more than 340,000 tons a year.

“Unless production in the two countries can be increased, this proportion is bound to decline as consumption increases,” it said.