Confidence Expressed In Dairy Industry

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31335, 4 April 1967, Page 12

Confidence Expressed In Dairy Industry

“The Press” Special Service

WHANGAREI, April 3.

The chairman of the Dairy Board (Sir Andrew Linton) said today that the dairy industry had every right to be confident of its future.

Dairy industry exports for the first nine months of the present trading year ending May 31 were over £ll million up on the same period last year, he said, and in the last five years overseas exchange receipts for dairy exports had increased by more than £3O million. In his address to the Northland ward conference at Whangarei today, Sir Andrew Linton said that the dairy industry was “now selling annually more than £35 million’s worth of daily products in markets outside the United Kingdom. This compares more than favourably with any other export industry in New Zealand. “Reserve Bank figures for the 12-month period ended January last showed dairy export earnings at more than £lO9 million. This was £lO million in excess of the previous year and, for the first time, greater than meat export earnings.” He said that these results had been achieved by an aggressive marketing policy and by the fact that the board, as the sole marketing organisation of the New Zealand industry, was in a stronger position than many of the competing suppliers. There was no reason, he said, why the dairy industry should not continue to expand. New Zealand was entitled to at least 170,000 tons of butter on the U.K. market until 1972. Given a stable market there for butter and cheese, he was confident the Dairy Board could find good outlets for any increased production.

“In fact we are doing just this to such effect at present that we need every ton of butter, cheese, milk powder and casein the industry can produce. This situation is likely to continue for some time yet.” As far as the question of British entry into the European Common Market was concerned, Sir Andrew Linton said that gloomy forecasts had been made on the bhsis of unwarranted assumptions. They did not constitute a valid basis on which to make or even contemplate changes in the national economy. He said that he had never been convinced on the inevitability of British entry in the immediate future. Planning had to be based on facts and the only known facts were that New Zealand had been guaranteed a market for at least 170,000 tons of butter in Britain. until 1972, plus a share of market growth. '*■ j “In addition, we have assurances by Britain that if and when she joins the Common Market, New Zealand will be regarded as a special case, particularly in respect of her dairy produce exports. . “We have made it clear, whenever and wherever possible, that British entry without safeguards for our position would be unthinkable, considering the numerous commitments made by the British Government on repeated occasions. I have every reason to believe that

those commitments will be honoured. I could not imagine otherwise.” It was most important, he said, that New Zealand realised that it would be entirely wrong to alter the pattern of production in this country on the basis of purely problematic forecasts of what Britain would or would not do, especially when the suggested action would seriously deplete New Zealand’s overseas income during the next few years.