Meat Processing At Airport Suggested

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31209, 5 November 1966, Page 1

Meat Processing At Airport Suggested

A meat processing plant may be established at Christchurch Airport, a meeting of airport users was told yesterday by the chairman of the Christchurch City Council’s airport committee (Cr. A. R. Guthrey).

Cr. Guthrey, speaking about air freight expansion, said that packaged meat was already being exported and that a dramatic increase was expected in the field. “The jumbo-jet and the use of containers and pallets is rapidly making the export of fresh meat by air an economic possibility,” he said. “This may, in fact, soon render obsolete the transport of our primary produce by refrigerated ships. “In anticipation of this development, and in order to encourage it, we intend setting aside several acres of land on the west side of the airport. And I think it is quite possible that within the

next few years we shall see stock arriving on the hoof at the airport, being immediately killed, processed and packaged and loaded on to an aircraft, all within a matter of an hour or so.”

Cr. Guthrey said this development would give a major boost to Air New Zealand and would stimulate the country's export trade. Air New Zealand had already done a tremendous amount of research in this field and even in Christchurch the economics of airfreighting fresh meat was being closely examined. Cr. Guthrey said this type of project was not wishful thinking; it was on the doorstep now.