‘World Milk Surplus Worst Since War’

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31704, 13 June 1968, Page 7

‘World Milk Surplus Worst Since War’

(N Z.P.A. Staff Correspondent)

LONDON, June 12.

Fhe situation arising from the world surplus of milk and milk products is the worst it has been since the war, according to Mr John Empsom, director of marketing and sales for the British Milk Marketing Board.

“The situation in Europe is particularly bad and it is probably from Europe that most of the problem stems,” he said in a radio interview with the 8.8. C. He added that the British market was the largest market in the world completely free as far as imports of dairy products were concerned—except in the case of butter, where there was a quota arrangement. “We become the main possibility for anybody who has surplus stocks or supplies of dairy products for which they want to find a market,” Mr Empsom said. Questioned about European and New Zealand butter surplus stocks, Hr Empsom said Europe had a butter “mountain,” but New Zealand did not have a surplus. “But, of course, New Zealand—competing as she does on world markets and acting as a big supplier to this country—is affected as far as price is concerned. She is affected as anybody else is, and particularly so in operating on a world market. “If you look at the world situation as a whole, roughly speaking about a third of the total supplies of milk are in the Common Market, a third

in North America, and a third in all the other countries. “You then have, in the Common Market group, a substantial total supply in proportion to the world markets as a whole. And then, of course, when this gets out of gear because it is so big, even a small percentage increase can have very profound effects. This is basically what the problem is.”

Mr Empsom said the only thing Britain could do was to protect her own import market.

“If you look at the supplies of milk to this country, taken as a whole, we provide only half our total supply of milk,” he said. “I say that because by the time you’ve converted your butter, your cheese and so on back to milk, our contribution to the supply of liquid milk and milk products to this country, is only about half the total. “If we did protect our market to the extent that other people do, it would leave room for our own dairy industry to expand. Our problem at the moment is trying to keep hold of what we’ve got.”