German Minister sees N.Z. potential

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32774, 26 November 1971, Page 3

German Minister sees N.Z. potential

New Zealand could offer prospects for West German investment, the West German Minister of Food, Agriculture, and Forestry (Mr Josef Ertl) said during a brief visit to Christchurch yesterday.

“I am not a businessman, but I will talk with our business people and bankers,” he said. “New Zealand is a land with a future. It is in a good position to sell to Australia, South America, Asia, and to the islands in the South Pacific. “I will talk with our people —tell them that they could take more engagement here —but I cannot order them; I can only talk,” he said.

Mr Ertl said he was surprised and impressed with the industrial development he had seen in New Zealand and he thought the country was doing the right thing by developing both the primary and secondary industries. Asked if he thought New Zealand should do more processing of its primary produce, Mr Ertl said: ‘T’m not here to give advice, I’m here to gain impressions. But every country must grow the two ways—do a lot for farming, but pay attention to industrialisation, too. “No modem state can stand on just one leg; for instance, just the ‘farm’ leg. It is impossible.” Mr Ertl said he thought many in Germany had little idea of what New Zealand like. “Neither had I before I came. I thought it was nice farmland and countryside, but I had no idea you had such secondary industries.’

Good image He would return to Germany with a very different image of New Zealand, he said—“a very good image, and with a lot of new friends.” New Zealand had struck him as a land with a very busy people, and people who liked to work, “ . . . which is not the case in other parts of the world at times.” Mr Ertl arrived in Auck-. land from the United States last Sunday, and since then has visited a butter and milkpowder factory at Morrinsville, a dairy farm, a casein factory, a particle-board factory, went fishing at Taupo (without success) and visited Ministers and members of Parliament, including the Prime Minister (Sir Keith Holyoake) in Wellington. Before coming to the South Island, he also visited Massey University, the Dairy Research Institute, and a sheep farm in Wairarapa. Mr Ertl arrived in Christchurch about noon yesterday, and during the afternoon visited the factory of Feltex

Carpets, Ltd, the crop research division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and Lincoln College. He later flew to Mount Cook.

Today Mr Ertl will visit “Glentanner,” a high-country sheep station, and return to Wellington, flying to Sydney on his way back to Germany on Saturday. Biography Mr Ertl, who was bom near Munich in 1925, gained his agricultural diploma from the Munich Technical Academy in 1950, and later entered the Bavarian State Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. In 1960 he became head of the Miesbach School of Alpine Pasture and Agriculture, and was a member of the German Bundestag from 1961. He is the president of

Japanese cameras up.— Japanese cameras will soon cost between 8 per cent and 10 per cent more, according to Auckland importers. They say factory prices in Japan have risen about 10 per cent after the floating of the yen, which rose about the same percentage in value. One wholesaler said his prices would rise from December 1. Two others said new stocks would cost more soon.— (P-A.)

the Free Democratic Party in Bavaria.

He is accompaied on his visit to New Zealand by Dr Hermann Martinstetter, the head of the Ministry’s foreign economic relations division.