Apple Board’s £910,000 Loss

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31256, 31 December 1966, Page 1

Apple Board’s £910,000 Loss

(From Our Own Reporter* WELLINGTON, December 30. In spite of a record apple crop, the Apple and Pear Board lost £910,000 in its trading year which ended on November 30.

The board had thus exhausted its reserves for the first time since 1950, and is relying on Reserve Bank credit until the first returns of the new season are received from Britain.

The majority of the deficit is represented by a £750,000 loss on the 3,100,000 cases of fruit the board exported to Britain and the Continent during the year.

“The Continent had a very hot summer including a fiveweeks’ heat wave, and people just did not want to eat hard fruit,” the chairman of the beard (Mr K. B. Longmore) said today. “In Britain, the price freeze and economic conditions generally affected our prices, especially as British housewives began to buy sparingly.

“The British seamen’s strike also had a lesser effect.”

The board made a profit of £50,000 on the 2,400,000 cases it sold, within New Zealand, and also made a small gain on the 450,000 cases exported to non-European markets.

The remainder of the overall deficit was depreciation. The previous year the board made a profit of £219,000 and built its reserves up to £839,000. These were exhausted by September.

The Minister of Finance (Mr Lake) has since granted the Reserve Bank overdraft the board requires by law once all the fruit it has purchased has been sold.

The overdraft will be sanctioned until the board receives returns from Britain next year. The first shipments should leave late in February and returns can be expected about a month later.