COMMERCIAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 1825, 12 November 1886, Page 18

COMMERCIAL.

The revenue collected at the Dunedin Custom Housa during the past week on goods cleared for consumption amounted to £6831 4s lid. Thu beer duty amounted to £336 13s Bd, and the gold duty to 9s.

It is satisfactory to note (says the Lyttelton Times) that the facilities now existing iv this city for the handling and despatch of wool in bulk parcels are such as to compare favourably with the appliances in larger places, like Sydney and Melbourne. As an instance in point, it appears that after tho opening sale of the season on Friday the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company (Limited) despatched for shipment for various buyers, who wished to catch the London January sales, 565 bales, which were re-sewn, re-branded, weighed, and forwarded to Lyttelton for s.s. Eaikoura and Doric, and reached there during Saturday, within 24 hours of the sale.

Mr lan S. Simson, Gore, reports having held a sale of contractors' plant at Tattersall's Bazaar on Saturday, November 6. Thirty-three horses were entered, and 25 were sold at, for medium draught, £12 to £24 ; hacks, £2 5s to £8 ; an old reaper and binder, £14; road scoop, £3; tip dray, £11 10s; double-furrow plough, £5 ; harrows, £4 ; spring cart, £10. There was a very large attendance of the public, and prices for the horses realised an advance of £3 to £5 per head more than the same class have done for months past.

By the mail steamer Tongariro we have some interesting news of several articles of produce aud manufacture in the colony. For instance, hops appear to have undergone a remarkable change in the London market. The Mark Lane Express of September 13 remarks as follows on the preseut state of the market :— " The hopgrowers are worse off than the wheatgrowers n respect of the value of their produce. Very low rates are now current for the new crop. It U thought that about £5 per cwt will be an outside price for the finest Bast K>nts, and 30s to 35s is now about the value of Prolifics ; whilst anything discoloured would come at 255, and even 20s is talked about. When the cost of cultivation, picking, drying, and marketing is reckoned up, such ridiculous values as these must evidently entail crushing losses on growers. I ! have heard it stated that the best of the new crop I samples of hops are being quietly bought up for the American market." The Times estimates the Home crop as being 33 per cent, in excess of the usual requirements ; and the Continental crops, good, bad, and indifferent, together with the stocks on hand, will be quite two years' supply instead of one. From private sources we learn the English hop-plauters have left thousands of acres to blow away on the poles rather than expend 25s per cwt in harvesting what will only realise 25s per cwt. The brewers appear to be using ! quassia or other " bittering materials," which, along with foreign competition, may account for the depression in the hop trade. The other article that greatly effects us here is the low-priced caudles which are being produced on the Continent. Good stearine caudles are produced there containing about 60 per cent, of palm oil and 40 per cent, of tallow. The prices of these articles in 1883 and 1886 respectively were : — 1883. 1836. Palm oil ... £38 10 0 £13 0 0 Tallow ... 44 10 O 20 0 0 And these present prices are not to be wondered at when it is remembered that from the i'oimer years stocks have gone on increasing. For itibtance, in 1883 the stock of palm oil was 680 tons; whilst at the end of last year it was 10,000 tons, with a trade continually developing from rivers on the West Coast of Africa that were not before opened up to commerce — the Niger, Calabar, Cameroons, Brass, and Bonny rivers. They are all laige and navigable for hundreds of miles, and no doubt the Germans; having now got a footing in this extensive oil-producing country, will open it up extensively with all classes of merchandise, which of course must have a tendency to keep down the price of palm oil both in the English and Continental markets. Then again, tallow has come from sources from which the supply was only limited, and independently of the great quantity of imports to Europe from South America, there is nowja vast quantity of tallow produced, brought about by the immense quantities of meat under the freezing processes throughout the world. Under these circumstances we fear the time is nofc far distant when our local manufacturers will have to experience perious opposition from 6ur German friends. Paraffin. — This article is making a serious inroad into the consumption of stcarine, no less than 22,000 tons having been made into candles last year in Scotland. In dried fruits currants are reported to have opened in London at 20s 6d to 21e, and then dropped Is. Prices steadied again when the mail left.