Shipping Line Trying To Hold Freight Costs

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31277, 25 January 1967, Page 18

Shipping Line Trying To Hold Freight Costs

The New Zealand Shipping Company, Ltd., London, was out to do all it possibly could to try to hold shipping costs or to minimise the possibility of further increases, said the company’s general manager (Mr L. K. Cooper) in an interview in Christchurch.

Mr Cooper spent Monday afternoon inspecting cargo handling facilities at Lyttelton.

His company, he said, wanted the support of shippers and importers to cut down transportation costs. He saw the immediate area of improvement in unit handling but not necessarily containers.

By units he meant such methods as more extensive use of pallets and denser dumping of wool. Mr Cooper said he was more concerned about the immediate future than the long term.

He was particularly concerned for the development of North American trade.

Mr Cooper said that experiments were being carried out in Auckland with more powerful presses to give denser dumping of wool. If these experiments were successful, he felt that Lyttelton should take advantage of the Auckland experiments and introduce a similar method here.

He said that in his two-day stay here he would see what was being done in the packing of cargo, such as pelts. They had been shipped for years in leaky casks. More recently experimental shipments were being made in liquid-tight drums. There was a lower rate of freight on such drums, because they were less trouble. On board ships there were limited places in which casks could be stowed. An enormous amount of dunnage wu used for stow-

ing the casks, and this expensive timber could not be reused.

Mr Cooper is visiting all principal ports in New Zealand in his endeavour to minimise freight costs increases.