AMERICAN APPLES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 972, 12 November 1910, Page 8

AMERICAN APPLES.

SHIPMENT ARRIVES IN BAD CONDITION. COLD STORAGE NECESSARY. "If 6 no use talking—they must havo cold storage if they are going to ship apples across the Pacific. Here's the result of shipping without it." The speaker was one interested in the produce trade of Wellington, and his releicnce was to, several stacks of Califomiau apples which had been brought across from San Fran-. Cisco to Auckland by the cargo steamer Spithead and transhipped there to Wellington. _ There were, it was ascertained on inquiry, about 2800 cases of Red Permains, shipped by Duffy and Co., of San Francisco, and fully three-fourths of the consignment are unfit for consumption simply because they have not been protected from the ills of sweating, which arc particularly bad on the trip from 'Frisco to Auckland, as the vessel is steaming in the tropics almost the whole of the voyage. Are .the apples rotten? asked the reporter. "As good as that—they are half-baked, and in the process have turned black. Some of the cases which have been near the top and exposed to the air are not so baa, and there are some that have escaped scot free, but the bulk of the shipment is damaged. The apples should never have been shipped in the steamer, They were looking for trouble!" The apples, which wero being offered at Gs. per case—they • are well packed in paper in dressed-timber boxes of the best quality—are all, that apples for export should be —clear from moth, a fine ruddy skin, and a'nice size fruit—yet the risk was taken of sending thousands of cases on a tropical sea journey of over three weeks' duration in a vessel without cold storage. The price that is being asked for the fruit just about oovers expenses, putting down freight and duty at Is. 9d. per case, the fruit and case at 25., after which has to be added wharfage, cartage, commission; and' sundry other charges. '