Moscow office for N.Z. company

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 23

Moscow office for N.Z. company

The first New Zealand firm’s office in Moscow has been opened at an official ceremony, reports Alexei Lipovetski, of the Novosti Press Agency.

The firm is the Amalgamated Marketing Company. Since 1970 the firm has supplied Soviet customers with about 500,000 tons of meat, mainly mutton.

The opening ceremony was held on the days of the sittings of the mixed Soviet-New Zealand Commission for Trade. The reception arranged by the New Zealand company was attended by the participants in the session of the mixed com-

mission. Representatives of Soviet foreign trade organisations and the Soviet press were also invited.

At the reception the associate director and sales manager, Mr Ross Finlayson, said that the Amalgamated Marketing Company took pride in the fact that it had become the first New Zealand company to open an office in Moscow and hoped that it would extend deliveries of goods in both directions.

Mr Finlayson noted that during co-operation with Soviet foreign trade organisations the company’s goods turnover reached about SUSIOO million

and that the Soviet Union was the firm’s number one partner in export.

In reply, Mr Nikolai Smelyakov, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, who is co-chairman of the mixed Soviet-New Zealand Commission for Trade, noted the firm’s efficient export of New Zealand agricultural produce. He emphasised that as distinct from other companies Amalgamated Marketing has also arranged purchases of Soviet goods, in the first place, cars and potassium fertilis ers.

In recent years New Zealand has imported about 3000 Soviet

Lada and Niva cars. Jointly with the Soviet Sovrybflot foreign trade organisation the firm has set up the Amalsov Mixed Fishing Company, which works in New Zealand waters.

Mr Smelyakov said that the opening of the firm’s office in Moscow would improve trading conditions and hence is a factor contributing to the intensification of the firm’s activity in the Soviet Union. In its turn the Soviet Union is prepared to sharply increase deliveries of its goods to New Zealand, in particular, car deliveries, which would promote the better over-all balance of trade with New Zealand.