‘Bright potential for lamb sales to Japan

Press, 3 November 1981, Page 12

‘Bright potential for lamb sales to Japan

PA Auckland The potential for increased exports of. lamb to Japan appears to be bright. A New Zealand meat industry paper delivered at the Japan-New Zealand businessmen’s conference in Auckland said there appeared to be much potential for expanded lamb exports. “Realising this potential will require regular supplies of consistent, top-quality lamb products combined with an aggressive image promotion of New Zealand meat." the paper said. Exports for the nine months of the latest full season to June were 10.667 tonnes, compared with 7111 for the same time last year.

Total exports for the season were still likely to be short of the 1978-79 record of 18,000 tonnes, the paper said. The high Government guaranteed price to New Zealand farmers for their wool this season worries Japanese wool importers. At the conference the Japanese side pointed to the increase in the supplementary minimum price for wool from 235 c a kilogram last season to 320 c a kilogram this season.

Mr Hidehiko Terai. general manager of Oceania of Kanematsu-Gosho, Ltd, said it was a sharp increase of 36 per cent. He said he knew the supplementary minimum price was not the minimum price at which wool customers were forced to buy. “Nevertheless. I see the strong desire of the New Zealand authorities and the New Zealand Wool Board to raise the actual market price to this level," he said. He expressed his “strong concern" at the increase in the price. Such a drastic change in the price level would give a strong shock to (Japanese) wool carpet makers, he said.

It would cause unnecessary confusion among them and' hamper their efforts to revive the wool carpet industry in the face of strong competition from the synthetic carpet industry. The managing director of the Woo) Board. Mr H. L. M. Peirse, said: "This supplementary pricing system works entirely between the Government and the woolgrowers and has no effect on actual market price levels.”

He said lower wool prices, combined with rapidly increasing on-farm costs, had effectively negated any improvement in income the New Zealand farmer had achieved by growing more wool.