NORTH AUCKLAND TRADE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14146, 23 August 1909, Page 6

NORTH AUCKLAND TRADE.

SUPPLIES FROM CANTERBURY

RESULT OF LOW FREIGHTS.

[FROM our own correspondent.]

Dahoaville, Saturday. If £50,000 worjtli of the trade between Auckland and Waikalo were annually transferred between the latter district and any Southern city, Auckland merchants would have just cause for complaint. Yet exactly the same thing has happened in regard to Kaipara and Christ church. It is not generally known that the residents of those counties bordering the great Kaipara estuary, and who, in round numbers, total some 8000 people, although vitally connected with the trade of Auckland, yet derive the bulk of their produce supplies and also many lines of general merchandise from the port of Lyttelton. The trade is one which has grown up with the kauri timber industry, and is legitimate and reciprocal. Christchurch is the chief Southern market for Kaipara's lumber, and at the present time the schooners Huia, Eliza Firth, Isabella Defraine, and the brigantino Aratapu trade regularly between the two ports. Month in and month out, they carry away full cargoes of building material, and hardly a week passes but one of them is discharging foodstuffs at Kaipara wharves. Occasionally other coasters sail in deeply laden with flour, oats, chaff, bran, hay, potatoes, hams and bacon, tinned meats, and. as before mentioned, other classes of merchandise. Tho cause is not far to seek. The average freight from Auckland to Northern Wairoa centres is £1 7s 6d per ton, for railway charges alone from Auckland to Helensville range from Be 8d to £1 5s per ton, whilst the full freight from Lyttelton to Wairoji is only 12s 6d per ton. From D lined in, which also in a measure participates in the commercial activity, water j carriage is only 10s per ton.

Naturally, every merchant will obtain his supplies by the cheapest route, and Kaipara. disbursero, by dealing with the South, instead of Auckland, save thousands of pounds per annum. But their sympathies lie with their provincial capital, and when an intercolonial liner sails from thence to the chief west coast port, in which case freightage only amounts to 10s per ton, she invariably carries a full cargo. Of course the trade carried on with Auckland is very largo. One has only to witness the commodious steamers of the steamship companies which control the service from Helensville northwards, and regard their ever-filled holds, to marvel where the supplies go to. But the fact remains that Canterbury is the chief food supplier to 8000 people within 100 miles of Auckland, and in estimating tho commercial turnover of the latter city it is educative to note that £50,000 worth of its near country trade is in tho hands of the City of the Plains.

Sometimes Kaipara imports prod from Victoria and New South Wales at a freightage of 8s 6d per ton. But that only occurs when the low prices ruling for her requisites in the Commonwealth aro irresistible. Still, in one form and another, her oversea imoorts for 1908 amounted to £15,0*00, which, added to her Lyttelton tradings, total a sum of £70,000, which is commonly regarded as being transacted through Auckland sources. In return for her produce, Canterbury takes annually an average of 4,000,000 ft of Kaipara timber, of an average value of £32,000, which places the Southerners in distinct benefit under existing arrangements.