MILK MARKETING

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 115, 16 May 1936, Page 10

MILK MARKETING

THE BRITISH BOARD

ADDITIONAL FACTORIES

(From "The Post's" Representative.) >; -;V.. ; .0 LONDON,; April 25;

Following- its advertising activities which are said to have enormously; stimulated milk consumption, the MiUc Marketing Board, is establishing additional factories for the manufacture of butter and cheese. , : ■ A site has been bought at Trewithian, near - Camborne, Cornwall, • on which a factory—for which the contract has been- signed—is to' be built for butter-making. This factory will work in conjunction, with: the present depot near Helston, where butter and cream are being produced. . Two factories have been bought in Shropshire. One, at Crudgington,! is to be doubled in area and-capacity during the next,few months and converted for butter-making. The other, at Nesscliffe, will be employed for separating surplus milk. The skim milk and whey from all the factories are returned to stock-raising farms. For the board's first factory at Aspatria, Cumberland,, additional plant'has been: ordered, and soon it will be making butter as well as' Cheddar cheese, while still other '■- developments are likely. Cheshire cheese is being made at a factory at Wem, in the border country of Shropshire, Cheshire,' and Staffordshire, and there is another at Frodsham in West Cheshire. A small depot recently bought at Swansea is likely to be the forerunner of: a big central factory in South Wales.' The only factory at the moment in the east of England is at Norwich, where cream and butter are 1 produced. "We are," said an official of the Milk Marketing Board, "actually a; mutual organisation of producers, and they will find'it to their interest if all mills is. sent to our depots to be' sold fol drinking, if possible, and, if not, converted, into other food. As supplies increase, more factories will be provided Last year the board spent, aboul £60,000, with notable success on an. advertising campaign to encourage mili drinking, and hundreds of inquiries, foi milk bars throughout the country an being.dealt with." : ■ .. .. METHODS CRITICISED. Mr. G. Titus Barham, speaking at I meeting, of the Express Dairy' Com pany, was critical of the method adopted by the.Milk Marketing Boar< as regards, the distribution of milk though he was careful to pay a tribute to the Minister of Agriculture .for. hi efforts and to. state that his remark were made in the spirit of co-opera tion. Without some such orgariisatioi as the Marketing Board, he declarec the whole process of production am distribution might have been. brough down to an uneconomic level. Among the points he made was tha the board abolished the system tha had worked so well in the past where by farmers entering into contracts wit the company had minimum and max: mum quantities of reasonable - propoi tions;: now farmers send ; any quar tity they like. The board suggeste that the surplus should, be manufai tured, but this process had involve the company in heavy losses. Th chairman admitted that the board th! year consented to a maximum, hi stated that this was of little use t the distributors without a minimui figure also. Mr.! Barham also declare that the latest demands of the boar upon the distributors*, which' have n cently been the subject of an imparti: inquiry, would have absorbed 75 pc cent: of the company's annual prof for the last three years.