Britain buying 35 per cent

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33527, 7 May 1974, Page 5

Britain buying 35 per cent

The Dairy Board has made further substantial progress in diversifying overseas dairy markets.

During the year ending May 31, about 65 per cent of the dairy 7 export trade will be with markets outside Britain. This compares with 54 per cent in 1972, and 30 per cent in the late 19605.

The chairman of the board (Mr A. L. Friis), told the board’s ward conference at Rotorua yesterday that during the present trading year about 18 per cent of the board’s trade would be with North America, 14 per cent with Latin America and the West Indies, 12 per cent with Japan, 16 per cent with South-East Asia and the Pacific, and 5 per cent with the Middle East and Africa, according to preliminary estimates.

“The remaining 35 per cent is represented by butter and cheese sales in Britain,

which remains our largest and most important market for the fat proportion of our milk. “The real problem we face is not of marketing, but of production. The only obstacle to the further development of prosperous trade is the limited availability of milk,” he said. AMERICAN TRADE “An aspect of great significance for the future is the trend in the United States and Canada, where milk production is failing to keep pace with increasing demand. This season, we shall ship to the United States butter, cheese, milk powder and casein amounting to 83,000 tons, and earning around s7sm f.o.b.

“The United States Administration has shown by the manner in which it has allocated quotas in New Zealand’s favour that it places full weight upon the fact that we are only supplier of non-subsidised produce, and further that in the long run New Zealand is its most reliable source of supply. “Our relations with the United States dairy industry at all levels are excellent, and are being consolidated by the work of our Chicago company, which is now marketing a large proportion of our shipments to the United States.

“There is a reasonable chance that the present system of permitting imports into the United States under emergency quotas will eventually give way to more complete removal of restrictions against some classes of our produce. “In Canada, our prospects for expanding trade, especially in butter, are bright.

“The North American developments are paralleled in Central and South American markets, where our sales in this trading year will be about ssom. LATIN AMERICA

“The efforts we made in earlier years to pioneer trade in Latin America are now reflected in growing exports to Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico — trade which is limited for the time being only by restricted availability of produce.”

Mr Friis said that the board and its agents in Latin America had set up a joint trading company, and the board now had its own commercial and technical representatives based with the company in Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo. The board had also established a wholly owned subsidiary trading company in Singapore, and a technical liaison office in Manila. SALES IN ASIA

Sales to South-East Asia this season would be about sssm. “Japan has a receding dairy industry and a steady increase in demand for milk products, and is turning with increasing interest towards New Zealand as its long-term source of supply. “Our office in Tokyo is under some pressure to maintain adequate technical and commercial servicing of a trade which is developing in every sector. The prospects for cheese, in particular, are bright. MIDDLE EAST “The prospects for our milk products in the Mediterranean and Middle East have improved considerably as a result of arrangements now concluded to introduce a more frequent and regular shipping service, which will be even further improved when the Suez Canal is reopened. “The markets in which we are now actively engaged are Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq, but the whole of this oil-rich region holds promise. These countries are tending to ! think of a ‘food crisis’ in the same terms that we are concerned about an ‘energy ! crisis’, and probably with I equal justification,” Mr Friis said.