FOOD IN BRITAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 85, 7 October 1943, Page 6

FOOD IN BRITAIN

COLD STORAGE SCHEME

WAR PROBLEM EASED

OC. > ; LONDON, August 120. At the conclusion of a constructional period of about three years, the great cold store building scheme undertaken by the Ministry of Food has now been completed, and Lord Woolton has declared himself satisfied that Great Britain is now provided with refrigerated food-holding facilities adequate for wartime needs. V The task of bringing the country up to a state of efficiency in this respect ■ has been a heavy one, as peacetime requirements for public cold stores-have been kept down by regulation of frozen food shipments from the Southern Hemisphere. A similar building activity in the last war resulted- in the total cold storage capacity of the country being raised from 32,000,000 .to 80,000,000 cubic feet, an increase of 56 per cent, and soon after peace was declared in 1918 the cold storage trade was slumping with an excess of available space on hand. Once more In; the 1 grip of war in .1939, the country found i that larger total much below its pressing needs, and the, Government has had to make it one-third larger. | CURE FOR A HEADACHE. At a Press conference this month Lord Woolton confessed that the fulfilment of this cold store building programme had removed one of his major headches, as. this safety, factor was a vital one for the1 nation. Seeing that the carrying out of this work has been largely a matter of secrecy, the fact that the. Minister of Food is able to speak openly about it is an indication that the country is'atlast on the threshold of securer conditions. The air invader is not the same menace as Shewas not long ago,.and the forty-seven new stores, erected at strategic points' and skilfully camouflaged from above, are considered tolerably safe from modern war risk, while at., the same time being placed in the best positions for service to the main population areas. It is the first time that the .country has seen the erection of cold stores of standard design. All forty-seven of them have much in common, including three-storey construction and'the provision of two engine-rooms, .one at each end of the store, so that bomb damage at one end would not affect the cooling of the entire store from the other. The stores are very amply powered, and their air-circulation cooling is arranged for the best, and most economical regulation of the temperatures at- any desired level. The latest ideas in regard to construction and equipment are incorporated in the new structures, which in every case have direct road and rail transport facilities. STRATEGIC DISTRIBUTION. Lord Woolton emphasised that the stores were strategically situated for public traffic purposes. For reasons of wartime safety port sites have been avoided. Neither has town location been altogether favoured, the main consideration being to' provide the best transport, facilities. Two or three miles from a famous university town, in the heart of beautiful country, lies one. of these stores, with its flat roof coloured to the tone of the surrounding fields, and its chambers far more accessible to incoming meat and produce than those of many older stores situated in congested areas and lacking road and rail facilities. One of the chief advantages claimed for the positions of the new Government cold stores is that transport and labour are saved by the direct dispersal of bulk stocks from the ships to the stores in the areas in which they are eventually to be consumed. ; The new depots carry all kinds of produce, from meat and dairy products to pickled fish and rose hips— the latter are for processing into syrup of high vitamin C content, for wartime nutrition. One of the duties of the stores is to hold food supplies for the large numbers of the U.S. forces in this country. When fully manned, the stores have a potential capacity greater than any in the country of the same size, and each of the standard cold stores can .handle well over 300 tons in a day. POST-WAR DISPOSAL. The cold storage industry is still asking what is going to be done with these Government cold stores when the war and the world-starvation period are over. The Minister of Food, at the time of the inauguration of his building scheme, gave a formal promise to the industry that the disposal of the stores later should not be allowed on a basis unfair to traders, that is to say, they should not be sold cheaply so as to become overburdening capital competition. The fact that their construction is of a permanent and, indeed, expensive character makes the industry wonder what the Government can do with them later. As mere warehouses, with their plant idle, they would be wasteful, and, dismantled, they would represent a big sacrifice. However, the industry is relying on the Minister's word in defence of its interests. The foundation of its fear is its experience after the last war, when the addition of 18 million cubic feet to the 32 million feet of space proviously • operating, resulted in a post* war slump from which the British trade has never fully recovered.