CONTAINER CHARGE

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 57, 5 September 1945, Page 8

CONTAINER CHARGE

A SOLUTION FOUND

CO-OPERATIVE COMPANY

Though probably most people have declined to take any live intreest m the long-continued argument over "container charges," believing that it did not concern them or their pockets, the growers of fruit and vegetables and those who handled them on the way to the table have been very well aware that the handling and the loss of the huge weight and variety of cases, boxes, sacks, and bags in which foodstuffs have come into Wellington have been a complicated and costly business, for which someone had to pay in the long run. Before the war, when materials were to be had for the buying, without permits and restrictions, cases piled up in back yards and sections and" on roofs and in alleyways, creating a hazard so real as to warrant repeated warnings from the fire authorities and the City Council, and even, occasionally, action against those who created the fire hazard. But with war shortages, accumulations of 'cases lessened and arguments over container charges began. Now growers and sellers have got together in a co-operative company of their own. The farming industries in New Zealand have long become noted for the manner in which they have accepted the principle of cooperation and joint enterprise in their trading ventures, as in the marketing of dairy produce and' pig products, the operation of freezing stores, and the manufacture and purchase of farming requisites, but the co-operative company which will handle containers is unique in that it is composed of European and Chinese shareholder members, and because it federates the interests of commercial growers and retail fruiterers; its board of directors is composed of European and Chinese growers and retailers in equal numbers. The company will be known as the Sack and Case Co-op. (N.Z.), Ltd., and has been formed with a nominal capital of £10,000; it will begin operations at once.

To store, classify, clean, and repair containers, the company has taken two floors in the .building of the Cooperative Dairy' Producers' Freezing Company, Waterloo Quay, and from there will handle cases, sacks, etc., for re-use by commercial gardeners and other users to as far away as Hawke's Bay and Taranaki. One of the principle reasons for the formation of the company was, of course, to assist in the conservation of case timber by keeping containers in circulation, by repairing those which otherwise would go to the discard, and by eliminating the waste which was inevitable in the past through haying no systematic method of collection and distribution.