Domestic price of butter up soon?

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 2

Domestic price of butter up soon?

PA Wellington The domestic price of butter is almost certain to increase soon, Wellington’s “Evening Post” reported yesterday. The Dairy Board’s general manager, Mr Bernard Knowles, said it was highly improbable the industry could maintain the present subsidy on butter in sales in New Zealand.

Until a few years ago the Government subsidised domestic butter supplies, but that responsibility then passed to the dairy industry which used healthy returns from overseas markets to compensate for the local subsidy.

Now those returns are not so good and Mr Knowles said he saw the possibility of the industry facing a deficit within the next two years. It is believed the board has been preparing a case for a butter price increase, but to have deferred it until its new butter marketing arm, Buttermark, is fully established, the “Post” said. The board says it has lost more than $l2 million on local butter sales during the price freeze which ends today. “We are taking one hell of a beating on that local market price,” Mr Knowles said yesterday.