TRADE WITH CANADA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 45, 21 August 1913, Page 2

TRADE WITH CANADA

BUTTER SHIPPERS UNEASY FEARS OF "NOBBLING" SPACE. While the New Zealand butter trade with Britain has been one of steady and consistent development, that with Canada has made really extraordinary growth considering the short time it has been established, as the following figures for boxes of 651b will show :— 1910-11 1911-12 1912-13 Boxes Boxes Boxes Exports from ... N.Z 9,800 51,512 108,230 The 1913-14 season is now about to open, and, providing he can tarn otit the butter at the price, the New Zealand butter-maker will find a most valuable second fitring to his bow this season in the Canadian market; also with every probability of & good market in the United States at a very early date. There are three reasons for this astonishingly rapid growth of the New Zealand butter trade with Canada— (l) The excellent quality of the article; (2) the businesslike way in which the exporters at this end approached the Canadian market; and (3) the preferential tariff existing between New Zealand and Canad* oy which the butter of this country is admitted at id per lb less duty than supplies from Australia— the next possible source upon which Canada has hitherto drawn to a very large extent, and that to the profit of Australian exploiting houses. It is no exaggeration to say that the Canadian market for New Zealand butter has now become an all-the-year-round trade ; for there have been enquiries and actual exports this year from September to August. Buf. for the very high price for which the butter can be sold in New Zealand itself at the present time much more could have been exported to Vancouver. WELLINGTON DISADVANTAGE!). From Wellington, through which the greater part of all butter for export passes, the butter for Vancouver can go two ways-— (1) via Auckland (upon which coastal freight has to be paid), and (2) via San Francisco from Wellington direct, the Union Company arranging delivery under one inclusive freight from San Francisco to Vancouver. ~" Now the butter exporters in Wellington, representing supplies from Taranaki. Wellington, Manawatu, Wairarapa, and the, South Island, as was pointed out in the Evening Post last evening, are in an anxious frame of mind as to the space to be at their disposal and the conditions under which they can ship to Canada. The exporters claim that they have laid the foundations (at heavy cost to some of them) of a good and growing trade in which the Union Company is able to profitably employ its newest vessels under substantial subsidies from the General Government of Canada and from the Government of New Zealand, but it is suggested that Australian exporters—whose Government does not contribute a halfpenny to the service— are also having their interests watched over and fostered. Butter men here hold it to be quite impossible for them at this stage of the trade, and at this time of the butter year, to pledge themselves totake up a definite amount 6f refrigerated space for twelve months as the conditions require. They cannot tell this moment, or even a week hence, what Canada may want in the way of the butter, nor what New Zealand will produce between next September and the end of the season ; and yet they are asked (they say) to risk having space on their hands which they may not be able io -nil. The period of twelve months fixed by the "Union Company is held to be much too far ahead. But then they are faced with the pro* bability that if they do not take it up Australian meat shippers will, and so the opportunity of despatching butter from New Zealand to Vancouver in direct steamers will be lost to them. If, again, they elect to wait events, then they will nave the opportunity of taking up 10,000 cubic feet in the steamers Marama, Makura, and Niagara by each trip to any time up till fifty-six days before the appointed sailing date. If space is not then all booked up, then the remaining space to the extent of 5000 cubic feet will be available during the following twenty-eight days. This 10,000 ft of space will only be available if the whole space is not applied for by Ist September. LAST YEAR'S EXPERIENCE. The experience last year of butter exporters who did not book space well before the beginning of the season was that they got no space at all. t They now consider it to be most unfair that exporters should be forced into the position of having to take up space so long ahead. Such a state of affairs, «as some of them contend, obtains in no other exerting country in the world, and especially so in one like New Zealand, which bo heavily subsidises a steamship line as the Union Company is subsidised. They experience nothing^ of the Kind in connection with the direct or London steamers. Another grievance is that while last season Wellington was on an even footing with Auckland as to freight to Vancouver, now an^additional burden of id peP lb of butter in boxes is to be imposed on exporters this year. This ia done on this wise: Butter shipped at Wellington for Vanvouver will pay per lb, or 7d per box more than when shipped from Auckland. If it is to be put»on board at Wellington to be transhipped at Auckland into the Vancouver steamer there, then it will have to pay Jd per lb refrigerated coast freight and charges, or la 2d extra per box. As it already pays about 4s 8d per box to Vancouver (8162 miles) as against 2s 6d per box to London (12,190 miles), this additional impost will bring the cost of freight from Wellington to Vancouver up to 5s 3d per box if via San Francisco, or to 5s 10d per box if via Auckland. The direct steamers' freight to London is inclusive of coastal freights, whereas the Union Company gives no through freight at all. The Vancouver rates are only as from Auckland or Wellington, the exporter paying all freight and other charges from other ports to the port of shipment— Auckland or Wellington. "NEW ZEALAND BUTTER ONLY." Another objection to the Union Company's new conditions are that the butter shippers must guarantee that! their space will be filled with "New Zealand butter only," and in the event of their not filling this space with bntter only they will pay as dead freight Id per pound, calculated at 561b per box. In other words, if they cannot find the butter for the space they have engaged to take they may not utilise it for meat instead; but they must pay 4s 8d per box penalty for every box they do not ship but would have snipped if they had had it to ship. Further, allotments of space will not be transferable. .This means that if an exporter has taken up space he cannot fill then he cannot hand it over to anyone else who can. Here it is clearly the intention of the company to stop the "nobbling" of space by people who cannot, and never intended to, fill it, but might or would vend it to those who will or must have space— at a profit more or less substantial. As a check to this practice it is held that the company should permit transfers of space upon being satisfied that the exporters who Originally took it up did so with the bona fide intention of filling it. i .Thft comrmnv in. -its . conditions f ur^J

nishes a schedule of rates on New Zealand produce, but states that they are to be subject to an increase in the event of "quarantine or other disturbance of normal conditions." Exporters wish to know if this increase would not be a variation from the terms of the original contract made between the company and the Government ; and also, who is to decide what is a disturbance of normal conditions, and what are normal conditions, and when are they not normal ? The disparity between freights on meat and freights on butter is ako refei'fed to by exporters of the latter article. They ask why should this difference be? :•— £ s. d. 40ft of space, butter at Id per pound is 5 17 10 40ft of space, meat at fd per pound is 1 15 0 Extra freight on butter... 4 2 10 If 1000 cubic feet of space were taken up and not filled, the butter man would have to pay a penalty of £147 5s lOd and the meat man a penalty of £43 15s. The butter men ask why? Their cargo, they Say, is much more easy to handle than meat) packs closely, and is clean and easier to stow. Further, they have had prepared for them details of cargoes taken from Sydney when space for New Zealand produce was not available, and this is for over a period from September last year to June of this. The position has already been pointed out to the Prime Minister by butter exporters in Wellington, who went as a deputation of individuals to see him. Again the Minister has been approached, the matter being most urgent, as tenders for the space cloee on Ist September, and it is open for the Union Company to allot all the space on that date if it receives sufficient for the purpose. The Minister has been asked, and is again asked, to so strengthen the Commerce Department that it shall see to these things itself, and not need the constant reminders of the exporters themselves of what is going on.