PRICE OF TEA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 19 November 1924, Page 5

PRICE OF TEA

A FURTHER ADVANCE. RISE OF TWOPENCE PER POUND. PROSPECTS NOT BRIGHT. (By Telegraph—Special to the Star.) WELLINGTON, Nov.. 19. The explanation of the twopenny rise in lib. packages of tea gives little hope of the upward movement stopping at this point. It is a reflection of the high prices ruling in India, Ceylon, and Dutch Indies during the past two months. .Teas suitable for New Zealand have advanced 5d per pound in those markets. The prospects so far as they appear, to those in the trade here and in daily touch by cablegram with the East are for still higher prices. English merchants, it is reported, in a letter "just received from Batavia, have purchased the output of the Java gardens for 1925 at current prices, but the business now being done, it is said, is not speculative, but merely precautionary. Although tea is enormously dear as the first points of the sale, yet the price has kept steadily advancing. Consumption shows no sign of falling off, but has enormously increased in U.S.A., where only two years ago a large sum was spent by dealers in co-operative advertising to stimulate retail sales. The demand, in the States has outstripped the supply, and as tea production was curtailed a few years ago owing to low prices traders, fear that the supply of eighth grade needed for the New Zealand market will continue short for some years.