COMMERCIAL Wattie Exports May Exceed $2m

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31633, 20 March 1968, Page 16

COMMERCIAL Wattie Exports May Exceed $2m

Overseas exports by J. Wattie Canneries, Ltd, are expected to exceed s2m this year, the managing-director (Sir James Wattie) said.

Sir James was commenting on the latest overseas canned fruit order of his company with West Germany, announced last week.

The s2m target was a big Increase on last year, he said. “Devaluation has given great impetus to this trade,” said Sir James Wattie.

“I have always maintained that New Zealand should never have allowed itself to become over-valued on the Australian currency. This goes right back to 1948. “We are just getting our reward now. We have built the business up since the

Second World War when we started to trade with Britain. “It is strange, this sort of trade. Once you get it established it starts to snowball" Sir James Wattie said the order with West Germany was worth about $lOO,OOO. “But there is much more to come,” he said. “This is just the start.”

It was not possible to say when the first order of canned fruit would be

shipped to West Germany. “One of our problems is shipping, not that the shipping companies are to blame," he said.

“Because New Zealand is a very small country in world affairs the shipping depends upon the annual cargo avail able.”

Sir James Wattie said his firm started packing the order this week for West Germany, but there would be a delay of between six and eight weeks in having labels printed in German.

' “For many years the cosl of production in the canned fruit trade has risen in other countries,” he said. “There was a time when the American production largely controlled the canned fruit trade. Their costs grew so high that the trade drifted over to Australia and Africa. Now even their costs are rising and we have a chance." Sir James Wattie said his company now exported to Britain, Sweden, Europe, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Aden, the Persian Gulf, New I Guinea and the whole of the Pacific area.