N.Z. Post drops its plan to sell flags

Press, 21 July 1988, Page 27

N.Z. Post drops its plan to sell flags

PA Wellington N.Z. Post has dropped its plan to sell New Zealand flags after a complaint by an Auckland flag-making firm that N.Z. Post “unpatriotically” planned to give the contract to an Australian firm.

N.Z. Post said the decision not to go ahead with the scheme had nothing to do with the complaint made by the Auckland firm, Bluegrass Products. The retail manager, Mr Neal Peters, said the scheme was not profitable enough and N.Z. Post decided to drop it. The Bluegrass managing director, Audrey Campbell, said a letter she received from N.Z. Post indicated her firm, New Zealand’s main flagmaker and seller, was

likely to lose to an Australian firm, Carroll and Richardson, in its bid to sell flags through N.Z. Post’s proposed mailorder scheme. N.Z. Post would have taken 20 per cent commission. Mrs Campbell said a letter from N.Z. Post strongly implied that the Australian firm had won the contract. She said she could not understand the decision to drop the scheme. It would have been “pure profit” for N.Z. Post, which would not have had the trouble of setting up the scheme, a franchise. She said she was concerned the scheme had only been dropped temporarily until the fuss over the “unpatriotic” complaint died down.