BUTTER MARKET

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 26, 31 January 1924, Page 4

BUTTER MARKET

PROSPECTS FOR EXPORT

THE AMERICAN BUSINESS.

It is_ reported that sales of butter foi immediate shipment to London have been made at Is 7^d per Ib, and a few days before at Is 8d for exceptional quality. This butter should arrive at the end of March or' eaiiv in April. The transactions are indicators of the confidence ielt by importers in file future of tha market. Last season, owing to an early northern spring and to the effects of foreign exchanges, London attracted large supplies of butter, with tho result that the market fell from 212s per cwt at the middle of March to 140s at the end of April. There are several influences operating this year to impart a, -tone of confidence to the market for March and April. Several conditions attaching to the British market this year were not in existence last season. One of these is the probable large increase in consumption of butter, due to visitors to the British Empire Exhibition another is the destruction of dairy cattle in Great Britain on account of foQt-and-mouth disease,\ lessening home production. ■The northern spring supply was unusually early in the market'last year, and it may be belated this year. The menace of- huge supplies from' Siberia is discounted by those in the trade. ' Eor- [ merly 80,000 tons of butter was exported i from Siberia, and half of this went to England, but now none is expected. Esthonia, Poland; Latvia, and Finland, however, are making large quantities of butter for export, and so a considerable Baltic trade is likely" to take the place of Siberian in the English market. . An exporter of New Zealand, when speaking on the outlet for butter in tha United States, informed "The Post" that the price there had'now to be considered as on the basis of London parity. The States must import butter, because— notwithstanding the high protective duty of 4d per lb—insufficient butter for the domestic market was being produced in the States during the winter months. The most favoured sources of supplies from without were Holland and Den'mark, because of their proximity and their ability to give delivery .within two weeks, whereas butter from New Zealand was double that time on the journey. There was one point the New Zealand producer of butter should not overlook: Every cask of Dutch and Danish butter taken by the States meant one less cask to compete with New Zealand produce in the,English, our principal, market.