DEPRESSION IN BUTTER

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1681, 18 May 1904, Page 64

DEPRESSION IN BUTTER

Speaking of the butter trade a gentleman intimately associated with the latter in the Manawatu says: —At the present moment the storekeepers and others in the retail trade were apt to cause a depression in the local market by selling at reduced rates on account of the reports from Home of falling ■ prices. But the London market has nothing to do with the local market, as it is fully recognised that the wholesale price for creamery butter should never be below lOd. It there-, fore behoves all concerned to maintain this price. Should this standard be lowered it must follow that suppliers will be compelled to accept lower prices for butter fat and those who have paid high iigures for land will iiot be able to meet the demands of the landlord or mortgagee. House retailers and those depending on them would be among the first to feel the reaction. One of the principal causes of the present decline at Home was that some wholesale firms in England have’been buying at high prices in the hope of holding the stocks wflile the market hardened. Their hopes had not been realised, and the speculators were compelled to unload at reduced rates. In view of the fact then, that the decline was only temporary, it was all the more imperative that rumours of tightness should be dispelled and the Local market kept up to the standard.