NEW ZEALAND BUTTER

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 75, 26 September 1917, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND BUTTER

■""There is practically no fresh Danish arriving, and no advices of shipments. For best butter we are, depending upon Irish creamery and a few cold store New Zealands." This is a paragraph from the report (dated 14th July last) of Dowdall Bros., Manchester. It is full of significance, not only for the New Zealand butter-maker, but for all who are directly or indirectly dependent upon the producing capacity of the Dominion, It is well known to those in the trade that from long before the war Danish butter has held a practically impregnable position in the Midland-Northern market of England. Its only'serious rival was New Zealand bntter. Other things being equal, there is no reason why ihe position should not bo reversed. But other things have not, always been equal as regards the quality of New Zealand butter. Jt could, and it often did, rival the Danish article on. occasions, but it 1 could, not oust the foreign butter from the place it occupied in the esteem, of the consumer. Wax prices are nothing to go by, because all butter is at a ipremium in the United Kingdom, in common with other fat-foods, and that for reasons generally well' known; but locking backward over a period of ten years, from 1905 to 1914, the London prices for New Zealand butter average 113s per cwt, while for Danish they are 120s 6d, the difference in favour of the foreign produce being 13-16ths of Id per pound. The supply for 1914 was 88,935 tons Danish, 42,726 British Dominions, . including 16,609 New Zealand, so the -Dane's pro-. fits, with his cheap labour, proximity to < markets, and no insulated, freight toconsider, must have been stupendous, quite apart from the fabulous prices he has received as. a-result k>f war-scarcity. New Zealand is now making its new season's butter under yery great difficulties as regards labour, storage, and shipping, and,.as contingent on shipping, possibly finance also. Prices in the Eng-i lish markets, if lie butter could- be landed in vfull quantities, would give splendid returns. The Dane is at liberty to flirt with ourselves-or our enemies as pays him best. If, then, the taste or prejudice of consumers ;in the Midland and Northern Counties of England has perforce been wooed-to "cold-store New Zealands," it will be for producers in j ■this country to fully--justify the changes by famishing an article which on qual- ! 'ltjj, if on no-higher grounds, is^to be •preferred' to-vany made 'by: foreigners. It., has been, don© before-and can be done again. The>pr.esent fancy, but'impermanent, prices-- should'not make New Zealand producers-indifferent to what will happen to trade after the war. The officers- of the Dairying Division of the •Agricultural Department- of the Dominion realise the position probably better tharj, anyone else, and the Director has never relaxed, his efforts to lessen the pre-war disparity between the prices for Danish and New Zealand butter, and, in fact, to remove it altogether.- The issue rests with producers themselves.