BIG SHIPMENTS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1930, Page 16

BIG SHIPMENTS

AUSTRALIAN FRUIT

SMALLER SIZES SENT

"Including the cargo of the Asphalien, which recently sailed from Adelaide for Glasgow, South Australia has exported about 400,000 cases of apples and pears this season,'" said the general manager of the South Australian Government Produce Department (Mr. G. A. W. Pope).

Growers were having difficulty in selecting from their orchards fruit of a size required by buyers, because January, February, and March had been the driest chree mouths in 91 years, Mr. Pope added. Lack of moisture had retarded .apple development, especially as the trees had been laden so heavily. That jieant a superabundance of 2i-inch apples, and growers bad to leave behind many that had not attained that grade.

"Although the apples shipped are on an average smaller than in a normal year, the quality will be good, because Black 3pot. is less evident," Mr. Pope said. First class Jonathans, Oleopat ras, and LYnn's Seedlings have leen received for shipment, and it is not expected that the larger percentage of smallor apples will injure South Australia's reputation.

"In fact, many north European countries specified for small apples. They limit to a marked degree the quantity of 2Jin arid 3in apples that cijuld be included in any contracts."

The feature in the industry this and last wee 1 had been the shipment of approsim .t'ely BC,OOO cases in the Natia, which had been chartered specially to take apples to-Hamburg whence they would be distributed over North Europe.

Space to be filled before the season ended, Mr! Pope said, was about 200,000 cases. That would be utilised principally to ship the crop of Rome Beauty apples.