Oysters At 3c Each

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31926, 1 March 1969, Page 1

Oysters At 3c Each

The first oysters of the season will be on sale in Christchurch on Monday if the boats get out tomorrow. and retailers say I the price will be 36c a dozen—3c each. This year the season has been shortened by lopping a month off at each end. The minimum size of takeable oyster has been increased, and fishermen are required to return the shell to the oyster beds as a conservation measure. For these reasons, the price ; to the trade has gone up! from last year's $9.15 a sack to $12.50 from one I merchant and $13.25 from I two others. “At 36c a dozen we’ll be'

making only 6c,” said Mr T. W. McKenna, manager of Knowles’s fish shop in Armagh Street. “They’ll be select oysters—the best—but <re won’t sell half of what we sold last year.” The price last year ranged from 20c to 25c a dozen in Christchurch fish shops. Mr McKenna said his shop had to hire a woman to sell oysters. “She has to count them out,” he said. “If you put in one extra, bang goes your profit. This is about the lowest we can really sell them for, and we don’t expect to make . uch on oysters this season.” But he considered that the higher wholesale price was justified in the spec-

ial circumstances prevailing this year. “I’m sure the customers understand that the price has to go up,” he said. Both Mr McKenna and Mr L. T. Taylor, of Taylor’s Sea Food Market in Colombo Street, emphasised that Christchurch oyster prices had always been very cheap. “Prices comparable with 35c and 36c have been paid in the North Island for several years,” said Mr Taylor. “It costs us an extra $1.50 a sack for transport, and the ridiculous thing is that last year we were selling oysters at the same price as shops in Dunedin and Invercargill. I“I think we’ve been selling a bit low.”