Quart Milk Bottle On The Way Out

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31340, 10 April 1967, Page 11

Quart Milk Bottle On The Way Out

The quart milk bottle is on the way out, and, according to the president of the Canterbury Milk Vendors’ Association (Mr P. A. Caithness) it will disappear in Christchurch after the opening of the new Blenheim road treatment station a year or more from now. Mr Caithness said this when he was asked to comment on a letter received by the editor of “The Press.” The correspondent, “M.T.,” asked: “People with invalids or children on their hands need pints of milk daily. Why have we so arbitrarily been deprived of the quart bottles which make things so much easier for those who fetch their milk from dairy shops?”

i Mr Caithness said that some I: Christchurch vendors were iI already using nothing but I pint bottles. It was a fact that, lapart from Auckland, Christ-

church was the only centre still using quart bottles. His company bottled 9000 gallons of milk a day in quart bottles, said the general manager of the Christchurch Milk Company, Ltd. (Mr N. S. H. McCann). It was probable, in some areas, that vendors were not using quart bottles. Many shopkeepers preferred to handle all milk in pints, as they did not like to break down quarts for customers wanting pints, and it was, in any case, against the law to do this.

The position of the Christchurch Metropolitan Milk Board was explained by its supervisor (Mr A. P. Milthorpe). “The board requires any vendor to leave the amount of milk stipulated by the customer, but the vendor decides whether he uses pint or quart bottles,” he said. “Elsewhere, the trend at milk treatment plants has been to standardise pn pint bottles so as to suit filling machines. The plastic crate, now coming into use in Christchurch, is made for pint bottles, and at the moment there is only one die for the tray, pint-sized.

“Wire crates are being used locally for the quart bottles, and as they need replacement, it is a question of changing to the plastic crate or continuing with the wire crate.”

As to the correspondent’s complaint, Mr Milthorpe said that while he did not think there was much the board could do, it would be prepared to investigate a complaint made to it.