GRADING FEES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21328, 1 November 1932, Page 16

GRADING FEES

CHARGES ON PRODUCE SAVING BY REDUCTION As a result of the reduction in grading fees for butter and cheeso announced recently, the dairy companies operating in tho Morrinsvillo district will make a saving estimated at about £250. At thp grading stores a sample is taken from one box from each churning. As the large churns make about a ton of butter, this moans a sample taken for grading from each ton. The grading fees have been reduced from 1.24 d per box of butter to Id, a saving of .24d per box, or about lOd per ton of butter. For cheese the fees have been reduced from 1.6 d per crate to 1.33 d. Referring to the effect of this small reduction, Mr. J. I. Faulkner, secretary of the Morrinsville Dairy Company said it was a step in the right direction, but what dairy companies would like to see would be a reduction in storage charges and railway freights. On an output of 2140 tons of butter last season tho Morrinsvillo company paid £3700 in storage and grading charges before shipment, and also £3600 in freight from Morrinsville to Auckland, a distance of 104 miles. The charges from the time the butter left tho factory to the time it was placed on tho ship totalled £3700. Compared with this the company's' total wages arid salaries were £3500 and the total for fuel, power and manufacturing stores was £2935, making a total of £6435. It cost more to rail butter to Auckland, grade it and put it on board ships than it did to receive" the cream at the factory stage, manufacture it into butter and load it on to tho railway waggons. At the recent Dairy Produce Board meeting in Morrinsville it was mentioned that the board had asked tho Railway Department to make a 50 per cent reduction in the freight on dairy production so as to bring it back to the rates ruling in 1917.