Lepperton Jam Factory.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume IX, Issue 1561, 26 February 1887, Page 2

Lepperton Jam Factory.

The Wellington Press has recently been publishing a series of articles on the local iutlustry question, and it has a very good word to say in reference to the Lepperton Jam Factory. Thus : — We now couae to three samples of jam from a place called Lepperton in Taranaki, which we are ashamed to say we never heard of before. This Lepperton jam is produced at a price which enables it to compete triumphantly with any imported. It is evidently made from choice fruit, and we are not surprised to learn that it contains none but the best loaf sugar-a very important matter indeed. It is splendid jam, the strawberry especially coming nearer to the finest productions of the famous English manufacturersthanany we have met with. The ordinary stuff fiom Tasmania or Australia is not to be named in the same day with this. Yet they are just about the same price. Where the Lepperton jam fails is in the " get up." The' tins have a distinctly rural appearance. They are squat in shape, and roughly finished, and the labels are very shabby and primitive, as if furnished, as no doubt they are, by the village printer. That, however, does not signify much except for export; and it can be easily remedied. Here, then, we have incontestable proof from twodifferentquarters, far apart, of the successful manufacture of jam in New Zealand at the lowest uuu ket price. There is assuredly no prejudice against local productions such as these. It is possihle, nevertheless, that, like many other local manufacturers, they do not meet with the demand their merits entitle them to, for this reason. They are not brought into notice by business-like methods. The public all over the colony cannot be expected to know by intuition that good and cheap jam is to be got at Lepperton, Taranaki, or even at a certain shop on Lambton Quay. It is a remarkable feature of colonial industry that those who engage in it seem ashamed to let the world know what they are doing. They seem to expect customers to come to them privately and to transact business by secret signs as if they were smugglers and the whole thing had to be kept dark. British and American manufacturers understand the art of advertising and appreciate its value; but colonists appear to think that money spent in making their wares known is a dead loss. In reality, it is the best spent money of all ; and local industries will never get a proper footing until that fundamental principle of business is recognised and duly acted ou.