FRUIT EXPORTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 January 1929, Page 2

FRUIT EXPORTS.

BOARD AND MINISTER. AN ORDER FROM. GERMANY WELLINGTON, Dec. 28. The various export Control Boards of New Zealand may perhaps feel a little anxious about their powers under the Ward Government, if what has happened recently in connection with the Fruit Control Board can be accepted as a criterion of the new Administration's future policy. All sorts of rumours have been current during the past week or so concerning the refusal of the Fruit Control Hoard to grant the necessary authority for the f.o.b. supply of New Zealand apples to a German firm.

'Special enquiries concluded by the 'Dominion” to-day show that shortly after Mr. G. W. Forbes assumed the portfolio of Agriculture, he was advised by a certain hrm of Wellington merchants that a well-known Hamburg firm, Messrs Lutten and Co., desired to purchase, at a price, 30,000 cases of New Zealand apples. Under the terms of the Fruit Control Act, however, fruit cannot be exported from New Zealand without the agreement of the Control Board. The new Minister. for Agriculture was accordingly requested to ask the Board to give the necessary authority for the purchase and subsequent export. It is understood that Mr. Forbes, who at that time had been less than a fortnight in office, wrote to the Board indicating that, in his opinion, the necessary authority should be granted. At the time the alleged offer for the f.o.b. purchase was received, however, the Fruit Control Board (the enquiries further reveal) had already arranged for the consignment of 100,000 cases of the same quality fruit to Rotterdam for distribution in the various northern European markets, including Hamburg. In those markets the apples would be sold at current market rates. As is well known, the Control Board is responsible for the distribution of the fruit for export of, roughly, 600 growers, and: it is clear that had it agreed to the proposition of the Minister for Agriculture, only a handful of growers could have participated in the sale in view of its size.

A special meeting of the Board was held to consider the proposal of the Minister, and after full consideration the Board, it is gathered, decided that while a few growers might benefit, it was unable in the interests of the growers as a whole to- agree to the f.0.-b. order. Another factor which is understood to have influenced the Board was the knowledge that the acceptance of the order could easily result- in the fruit being sold in Hamburg at prices that might be detrimental to the other New Zealand fruit sent on consignment. The decision ol the Board has been conveyed to the Government from whom, through the Minister for Agriculture, the next move, if any, must come. Publication of the foregoing information will, no doubt, raise, in the minds of Dominion growers generally grave concern as to what future lies ahead of their Board. “Is this not the: thin end of the wedge, and a preliminary to the repeal of the. compulsory clauses of the Act?” is the question many will doubtless ask. The answer can be given only by Mr. G. W Forbes, who, at present, is in the South Island.