VALUE OF TRADE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1941, Page 10

VALUE OF TRADE

OVER £18,500,000

STORAGE PROBLEM

DIFFICULTY WAS FORESEEN

For eleven months of 1940, the value of the meat export trade was £18,580,756. This included beef, lamb, mutton, pork, and veal only. There were other meat products exported that occupied refrigerated cargo space. Almost the whole of that trade was to the United Kingdom. The "star" item in the exports was lamb, of the value of £10,733,106; beef accounted for £2,627,911; mutton for £2,833,097; pork for £1,667,383. Beef was almost all of it frozen and required and preferred for Army purposes. The returns above quoted are not for the full year of 1940, but for eleven months, returns for December not being available. Suspension of the Dominion's export meat killing industry, now in full swing, would obviously cause serious dislocation of that industry and throw out of gear the supplying section, the farmer with his fat sheep and cattle, with the pasture or feed problem to be solved. HOLDING LIMITED. Holding the meat in store in New Zealand is limited to the capacity of the refrigerated space available. That is the problem. It is not only one of cubic capacity, but of the costs of holding and loss of interest on capital, represented by meat for which there is no immediate market The difficulty of the limitation on the shipping of frozen meat is to be felt by Australia as well as New Zealand. From a report appearing in "The Post" on Tuesday last, it was to be learned that the Federal Government expected this difficulty to arise and was taking steps to meet. it. Australian exports (latest available returns) of mutton and lamb to the United Kingdom amounted to 6,500,000 carcasses and of beef to 1,380,500 quarters —double what they were seven years ago. New Zealand supplied 80 per cent. !of the United Kingdom imports. MEAT BOARD"S WARNING. That the need of increased cold storage capacity in New Zealand was fully realised is evident, for the New Zea-. land Meat Board reported for the year ended June last:— It would be in the interests of the Dominion if storage facilities were increased at a number of the works, as there was no doubt that the refrigerated capacity of many works in the Dominion was not equal to the strain of an abnormal season, such as the one just experienced. It is acknowledged by the board that "as a result of conferences called by the Government —in which the board co-operated—a great deal has been done to remedy the deficiency in cool storage." The position (as it was then) "would have been much worse if it had not been for the additional cool storage built by several freezing companies to meet the Government's requirement." But the board added that it views with grave concern the position which has arisen consequent upon the war, and it considers that the additional storage which has been provided is not yet commensurate with the increased kill. After the experience of the last war, it is imperative that the Dominion must possess ample cool storage to meet any position that may arise. The position that has now arisen emphasises in a striking manner the warning given by the Meat Board of | New Zealand's inadequate cool storage ' capacity, | The board added:

"Nothing could be more disastrous to the farming community than the inability to kill their fat stock owing to freezing works' cool stores being congested."