GRAPE-PACKING.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 75, 31 March 1910, Page 3

GRAPE-PACKING.

ANOTHER UNSUCCESSFUL CONSIGNMENT. [»T TELIGBAPH — SPECIAL TO THE FOST.] DUNEDIN, This Day. One of the commercial problems of the day is how to pack grapes so that they will carry without terious deterioration. The importation of grapes to New Zealand up to the present has been anything but a payable speculation for the sender^ and tne sole cause of the non-payable returns of which the growers complain is that the fruit goes queer on the way The Manuka, .from Melbourne last week, brought forty-six rases, on which the freight alone came to £3 16s, and the whole lot, presenting almost a worthless appearance, was told for 235. Rate and a half is paid to have tile grapes carried in the ship's freezing cuambers. On this parcel of forty-six cases the freight was practically Is 9d per case, and, in addition, there was a duty of Id per lb, also wharfage and cartage, making in all, roughly, lOd per case before the grower gets anything. His remarks when he knows that the lot went for 23b can only bo guessed. The cork-packing which is used satisfactorily for this purpose all over the world, does not seem | to answer for carriage to New Zealand, j The cork appears to penetrate and let [ oat the juices of the grapes as the^ cross the Tasman Sea, and as the frurt "runs' it spoils the firmer article underneath.