PRICE OF FRUIT

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 76, 27 September 1927, Page 10

PRICE OF FRUIT

ALLEGATION AND REPLY

ißy Telegraph.), (Special % "The Evening Post.") DUNEDIN, This Day.

The complaint made recently by the Canterbury Fruitgrowers' Association against the hugo profits allegedly being made by fruiterers has drawn a reply.

"Competition is so keen that the man who sets out to make 200 per cent, profit is courting disaster, and to allege such profits is a gross libel on fruitsellers," declared a' wholesale merchant. "Certainly fruiterers are ' not making big profits. I have never seen a'fruiterer who has been able to retire. He works at least sixteen hours a day." A fruitgrower said that some of the statements wero: perhaps exaggerated, but he believed that often the margin was too great between the prices paid to the growers and those paid by tho public. Only.at glut times would tho price of plums fall to Id a lb, as stated in Christchurch, and as the costs of a 211b case were, over Is 2d, it would be easily-seen that the fruitgrowers would soon cease sending fruit ,to that market. There were times when all tho soft fruits came on to the market with a rush and had to be sold, but he doubted .whether, owing to the glut and the state of ithe.fruit,: sellers-would be able to realise 5d per lb in shops.*

The Right Hon. Edward Shortt, K.C., British Secretary for State Affairs for 1919-1922," who has recently arrived from England, will be the chief guest and speaker at a luncheon to be tendered in his honour by the New Zealand Club 'to-morrow at Gamble and Creed's, - Lamb ton quay.