GERMAN TRADE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23121, 20 August 1938, Page 14

GERMAN TRADE

DIRECT SHIPPING LINK CARGO FROM DOMINION STARTING IN DECEMBER FIRST SINCE TIIE WAR Marking one of the most important advances in the New Zealand shipping trade in recent years a regular direct cargo service between the Dominion and Germany will be inaugurated early in December, it will be conducted jointly by Hambiirg-Amerika and North German Lloyd, whose Auckland agents, Henderson and Macfarlane, Limited, yesterday announced the arrangement. The route will offer the first regular connection since the German-Austra-lian Company withdrew shortly before the war. The first ship in the trade will be the Hallll)urg-Amerika steamer Nauinburg, which will load at Auckland early in December lor Germany and the Continent. She will he followed by the same company's steamer Gera. Both ships are well known in New Zealand, which they have visited in the service from Texas and Mexico conducted by Hamburg-Amerika in conjunction with North German Lloyd. Only a bare intimation of the two companies' plans has yet been received in Auckland, but fuller details, particularly concerning outward trading from Germany to New Zealand, are expected shortly fiom Bremen, Growth of Exports The decision has been prompted largely through growth of exports from the Dominion to the Continent. Since the abandonment of the trade of tile German-Australian Company with the onset of the war there has been no regular service between New Zealand and Germany. A few of the ships in the New Zealand-England trade have occasionally called at Hamburg or other Continental ports to discharge produce 011 their way to London, and a considerable amount of cargo for Germany has been transhipped through United States and English ports. it- is not known what effect the new arrangement will have on the service to Boston and New York given by returning ships on the Gulf of Mexico trade, but it is presumed that calls will be made to the United States on the way to Germany if sufficient inducement is offered.

Expansion of Trade The establishment of a German shipping line from New Zealand to Europe is in keeping with German policy. Both the Hamburg-Amerika and North German Lloyd companies are financially controlled by the Government, the post-war aim of which has been to pay more attention to the long-distance trades than to any others. Before the war German vessels traded to many distant parts of the world and the gradual revival of these connections indicates the country's belief that on such operations depends the real foundation of the shipping industry.