SEPARATOR SALES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 212, 6 August 1940, Page 10

SEPARATOR SALES.

CONTROL BY GOVERNMENT. AUCKLAND, Aug. 5. With the object of conserving existing stocks and limiting importations, the sale of cream separators to farmers is to be controlled by the Government according to advice received by distributors of farming equipment. Under this scheme the purchase of a new separator will have to have the approval of the Department of Agriculture. The principal of a large firm of separator distributors said that the Government was exercising powers held under the Dairy Industry Emergency Regulations, 1939. Acting on the contention that new separators should nob be purchased unless the ones they were to replace were beyond repair, a local dairy instructor or departmental officer would examine the machine that had been in use and decide whether it should be renewed or a new one purchased. “In effect, the distributors are to be denied the right to sell separators unless the authority of the department can be obtained,” lie continued. “The scheme has already been discussed with the department," and alternative proposals, which we think offer a more practical solution, have been submitted. No indication has been given as to when the restrictions come into force, but it is presumed in some quarters that they apply immediately.” It was stated that 54,000 separators were in use in the Dominion, and, with the average life of the machines estimated at 10 years, normal replacements were 5400 annually. As a result of the import licensing restrictions and the necessity, at the request of the Government, of maintaining reserve stocks, it was at present possible to supply only 3000 separators a year. Now the position was to be complicated by added restrictions. Stocks of separatoi's in New Zealand are not large, but in the ease of at least one distributing company there is reported to be access to supplies from overseas. It was explained that there had been some interference with importations from Sweden and Britain, but the United States provided an alternative source.