BUTTER PRICES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18511, 23 March 1922, Page 5

BUTTER PRICES

THE PRICE-FIXING SCHEDULE. LEADS TO TROUBLE. (Pn United Pbkss Association.) AUCKLAND, March 22. The members of the Auckland section at the Dominion Butter Committee have resigned in a body owing to being unable to agree on the price for butter for local consumption. The members were Messrs T. Bassett (North Auckland, chairman), W. C. vMotion, and A. Buchanan (Waikato), and H. C. Aiken (Auckland). The resignations are the outcome of the New Zeeland Co-operative Dairv Company reducing the price of first-grade butter from March *5 to Is 2d wholesale, a penny below the price fixed by the committee. The committee met to discuss the position, and the representatives of the company declined to agree with the suggestion that the price should be advanced to Is 4d wholesale, to correspond with the value of butter cn the London market. Subsequently Mr Aiken stated that as far as the companies outside the New Zealand Co-operative DairyCompany, operating on the local market, were concerned, the price of first-gads butter for local consumption would be maidtained at Is _3d wholesale, the price fixed by the committee. Though it was a penny in advance of the New Zeeland Dairy Company’s price it was a penny lower than London parity. British buyers were now offering Is 3d per lb f.o.b. , for butter manufactured up to June. This offer bad been refused, indicating that London pricee were expected to go still higher. Old stocks of New Zealand butter that bad been in London had been cleared, and with increased - consumption that bad resulted through the lowering in butter pricee in Great Britain, it was anticipated that the market would be much firmer in future.