WRAPPING OF BREAD: GROCERS COMPLAIN ABOUT REGULATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 February 1948, Page 8

WRAPPING OF BREAD: GROCERS COMPLAIN ABOUT REGULATION

(P.A.,1 INVERCARGILL, Feb.' 4.

Until they receive reimbursement for the cost of wrapping paper, some grocers in Invercargill are refusing to comply with the regulation introduced on January I that all bread sold over the counter must be wrapped. The general feeling is that grocers cannot afford to wrap bread on the present profit margin, and that for the measure to be fully effective, bread should be wrapped at the bakehouse. Saying that the regulations stated that bread had to be wrapped at the bakehouse, and yet because of machinery and paper shortages, the onus was being placed on the grocer, one grocer said that if the Government made regulations, it should be prepared to carry them out. It was to some extent the Government’s responsibility to make the necessary machinery available in bakehouses. Grocers, he said, were fully aware of the difficulties faced by a baker in wrapping bread. To add to the other difficulties, paper—the main paper used in the wrapping of bread—was now unobtainable from the manufacturers, said another grocer. “In such cases as bus orders and rural deliveries, bread wrapping is compulsory, and we have to use kraft paper. Not only is this paper dearer, but there are fewer sheets to the pound. Kraft paper is £ 11 a ton dearer than cap paper.”