HULL AND DOMINION TRADE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18898, 26 June 1923, Page 8

HULL AND DOMINION TRADE

PROVISION OF COLD STORAGE. RETURNED TOURIST’S STATEMENTS DENIED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, May 10. A paragraph appears m tue Yorkshire Post winen lias a' unman interest as well as a commercial interest to Now Zealand. In the first place it demonstrates the limitations with regard to the geography of the Empire that sub-editors even of influential newspapers at Home labour under. The article in question deals with trade between Hull and New Zealand, yet so prevalent is the idea that New Zealand is part of Australia, that heading to the article is “ Hull and Australian Trade.” It seems that Mr T. W. Allen, timber importer, was welcomed this week at tho meeting of the Hull Chamber of Commerce after a tour round the world. At the close of tho business of the Chamber (of which Mr Allen is an ex-president) he spoke upon one or two matters of special interest to Hull traders. At Christchurch, in Now Zealand, he said, he found out an agent for the London and North Eastern Railway Company, from whom he did not get, a very encouraging tale. This agent told him that the company’s efforts in that part of tho world were " feeble in the extreme ” compared to what was being done for Liverpool and Manchester. Tho London and North Eastern Company had actually authorised him to spend the enormous sum of £IOO a year for advertising. He (Mr Allen) got a lot of information from him and also from the agent at tho Wellington branch. Steamers in that part of the world were filled up first of all with meat and dairy produce, for which they were specially built, and then they took in wool. He found that wool went only where tho produce went, and he was informed that they had practically no meattrade in Hull owing to insufficient cold storage. Mr J. W. B. Wilcock, London and North Eastern Railway (which owns all the docks at Hull) protested 1 against these statements. It was not correct, he said, and he thought it inadvisable that they should be made in the present of press representatives. AGENTS IN NEW ZEALAND. Mr Allen said he was not antagonistic to tho company. He understood that the provision of cold storage was not very extensive, and that there must bo much more, or Hull would not get the wool. He found that Bradford buyers were sending their wool via Goole. They shipped it. via London to Goole, and the freight cost them no more than via Hull. When he asked tho Bradford men why they sent their wool to Goole he was told that Goole people loaded the wool on the wagon for nothing. Liverpool had an agent at Sydney, who frequently visited New Zealand, and, with a personal knowledge of the Mersey Port he was able to speak to the New Zealand shippers with authority. Mr Allen said he came to the conclusion that Hull would have much belter results with an agent on tho spot. The president (Mr Edward Durnoulin) suggested that Mr Wilcock should -invite Mr Allen to go round the cold storage plant and accommodation in Hull, and he would bo enlightened.—(“Hear, hear.”) The cold storage at the Alexandra Dock and in the old town was enormous, and there was hardly a big meat firm in tho world that was not represented in Hull to-day. As for’ the wool imports, he informed Mr Allen that last year Hull imported 670,000 bales, .and that no other port, except London, had anything near that figure.