A case of priorities

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32588, 23 April 1971, Page 12

A case of priorities

Professor W. O. McCarthy, new professor of marketing at Lincoln College and head of the agricultural economics and marketing department at the college, was not inclined to commit himself to giving undue attention to locating markets for new products when he was questioned at a meeting of the Canterbury section of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Science this week. Dr I. D. Blair a fellow member of the staff of the college, emphasised the need for some direction in the utilisation pf new ideas and new products. He cited peppermint growing as such a development that might need exploiting.

Professor McCarthy saw his role as being to advise people who had a product about its marketing, but not to lay down the shape of a new product that might be produced—he was not an agricultural scientist He also foresaw a major role for people like himself in making savings in the handling and marketing of important existing products like wool and meat, which precluded too much time being given to new products. He referred to work done by the University of-

Queensland which showed that a reduction of wool selling centres from 14 to' 10 in Australia and radically altering the pattern of wool flow could result in the saving of about s3sm, and he indicated that similar studies were being initiated in New Zealand. Studies in Australia on the size of killing works had also disclosed that it cost almost twice as much to process a beast in some works as in others. With stock numbers committed to going up in New Zealand, care had to be exercised in locating works and ensuring that throughput was at a

level that kept costs as low as possible, he said.