Dairy owners seek surcharge

Press, 16 February 1980, Page 22

Dairy owners seek surcharge

A bottle of milk bough from a dairy may cost 20c if Canterbury dairy owners have their way.. The local branch of the Dairy, Confectionery, and Mixed Business Association will ask its national executive to seek a 2c handling surcharge for each milk bottle. The executive would meet in Christchurch on February 18 to consider the' matter, said the national vice-president (Mr J. J. McGrath). “We will recommend that a milk bottle be treated in the same fashion as a softdrink bottle,” he said. “If you buy a bottle of lemonade in a shop you will be charged 10c for the bottle, but you will be en- - titled to only 8c when you bring it back empty.” If the idea was introduced, ;

returning tm empty milk bottle would be entitled to only 16c credit for it. and would have to pay 18c for the milk and an extra 2c, making 20c.

Mr McGrath said that the law providing for a 2c handling surcharge on soft-drink bottles did not specify what sort of bottle it concerned. “It doesn’t say only softdrink bottles,” he said. Government departments had not been prepared to tell the association whether this was legal.

Mr McGrath said dairy owners sought the surcharge because the retail margin was only 2.4 c for a 600 ml bottle. Time and motion experts had found that it cost a dairy owner 3.7 c to sell each bottle, he said. The retail margin increased only this week, from 3.12 c a litre to 4c a litre.