FROZEN MEAT TRADE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 83, 5 October 1910, Page 3

FROZEN MEAT TRADE.

REGULATION OF SUPPLIES. A LETTER FROM LONDON. •BY TELEGKAPH — SPECIAL TO THE TOST.] CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. A London meat broker writing to a Christchurch correspondent, under- date London, 26th August, makes the following references to the frozen meat trade : "Your letter of 13th July to hand, and I note with interest that there was very little doing, supplies being exhausted, and the weather being bad. This is unusually early for the season to close, and makes it difficult for buyers to regulate their supplies. At one time it was hoped that as far as Canterbury was concerned, supplies would be regulated so as to be available for the greater part of the year. The freight and freezing charges and the policy of the first directors of the freezing companies were to extend the season and build up a regular trade. If these ideas_ are abandoned, and stock rushed out in large quantities at irregular intervals, then there .will be a great uncertainty of prjceo and irregular trade. What you write is interesting, but buyers will only purchase on tho actual position, and all that can be said of the possible short supplies and light shipments carries little weight. Buyers are rightly suspicious of these statements. They naturally ask, if the supplies are going to fall off, 'Why is so much shipped?" It is not to be expected that buyers will lay out their money on a problematical shortage when shippers have the power and the whole advantage of protecting themselves. You will "therefore gather thac all guesses as to the future prices are dangerous in face of large supplies in sight. If -shippers believe in the future, then let them hold back their shipments and get the benefit of the higher prices. Every carcase to excess shipped or in stoic here tends to lower prices."