Bleak Prospects For Talks On Butter

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31255, 30 December 1966, Page 1

Bleak Prospects For Talks On Butter

(New Zealand Press Association) LONDON, December 29. Cheese stocks in Britain are falling and for the first time in two years they are below 40,000 tons.

But butter stocks are heavy and to New Zealand negotiators it seems likely that the annual butter quota talks with British representatives next month will open in a depressing atmosphere.

London traders see no prospects of any price rise in butter in the near They predict quantities in storage next month will be little below the 61,000-ton level of January last year. The British Government is expected to year to fill her authorisation deliver its quota proposals to the New Zea- S a? gj land mission within the next three weeks. stage> but it is not considerThe talks will probably get under way about ed a price rise win result. January 20.

Sir Andrew Linton, the chairman of the Dairy Board, will arrive in London on January 16. Mr A. H. Ward, the general manager of the board, is expected a day earlier. The New Zealand negotiators are expected to base their arguments for at least a holding of the over-all size of the quota on the depressed market price of 300 s a hundredweight. The British are unlikely to be sympathetic to New Zealand’s arguments that at a

rate of 300 s butter production is, as far as New Zealand is concerned, uneconomic.

New Zealand traders have been bluntly told by British trade officials that they consider New Zealand has not done enough to find new markets. Nor do they believe that production figures should have been set as high as they have been in New Zealand.

The latest bulletin of the Commonwealth Economic Committee indicates that Denmark is unlikely this quota