NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE IN GLASGOW.

Otago Witness, Issue 2302, 14 April 1898, Page 7

NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE IN GLASGOW.

SOME USEFUL HINTS. (From Ovb. Own Correspondent.) London, February 18. Last Monday I paid a flying visit to Glasgow. I may remark in paesicg upon what a wonderful advance there is now in the ease and comforb with which such a journey as this can be performed. You join the night express .quite leisurely somewhere about 11 o'clock, and go to bed at once in an exceedingly comfortable little bedroom, which you have to yourself, fitted up with a surprising variety of conveniences and appliances packed into a small space, including no fewer than 14- different hooks and pegs for hanging up things. You have a good night's rest while you glide along as if on ice, and you reach Glasgow in plenty of time for a refreshing bath and an early breakfast, feeling none the worse after the 440-mile journey than if you had slept in your own bed at home. You go fresh to your busifleas in Glasgow, have the whole day before you, and leave the same night, returning to London in similar comfort, and arriving fresh for brcakfa&t and work next morning. Possibly these remarkable improvements of

.^ravelling facilities aad conveniences have bid their share ia developing trade between the north and south, and, as one consequence, in providing an important fresh opening for New produce; At any rate, the New Zealand produce trade in the great Scottish commercial metropolis — the .second city in magnitude in the whole British Empire — appears not i i only to hold its own, but to be advancing by ! leaps *nd bounds. , j Calling by appointment on Monday morning at the offices of Messrs Dempster, Pater- ■ aon, and Co., which are situated in Union street, virtually the absolute heart of Glasgow, I had another exceedingly interesting and instructive interview with their produce manager, Mr H. R. M'William, the well-known expert, formerly ! of Now Zealand. I may remark here that it ia I pleasant for a brother New Zealander to notice ! tho high esteem in which Mr M^iViliiam is | j evidently held in tha important mercantile j ! centre where ho has taken up his career. .At a J ! later period in the day I was talking to one of I the principal .praduce merchants and distributors of Glasgow — a typical Scottish mer- | chant, with the characteristics shrewdness, i acuteness, and perceptive power for which hia countrymen are often remarkable written iv ' large characters in every feature of his face, i He spoke to me in terms of quite enthusiastic j admiration of Mr M 'William's remarkable [ energy and grasp of his subject, and declared i emphatically that anything which Mr M'William ] did not know with regard to the produce trade might very well be disregarded as not worth knowing. This was said quite spontaneously. However, to return to Mr M'William himself . He took me through vast storages of imported butter, principally Danish, Australian, a&d ; New Zealand. A large shipmeut had just arrived from Queensland, and was turning out very well. The first point to which he directed i my attention was the curious difference in the methods of packing employed. A considerable portion of the butter in the Queensland ship-J ment was packed- in absolutely cubical pine Jooxes, each .holding 561b. A good deal of tha New Zealand butter was similarly packed. i

"Now, you see," said Mr M'William, " nothing could be neater or more cleanly or more symmetrical than these boxes, aad than the way the butter is stowed inside them. It is, of course, quite a pleasure to receive produce so nicely and attractively done up, but I want you to notice that these boxes as they stand piled up there fit co tightly together that tho whole of the number of boxes become almost one solid mass. Hence they leave no space whatever for the circulation of air between them. It appears certain that a free circulation of air of the right temperature ia distinctly advantageous to the butter, and tends to the preservation of its quality." "So," he continued, " I am now going to show you the plans adopted by some exporters of butter to ensure that there shall be this free circulation of air."

Mr M'WilliHm conducted me to another parb of the warehouse, and showed me there a huga pile of boxes just; about the same size as the first lot, ooly differing in thi3 remarkable particular : that the tops of tho boxes had been' carefully corrugated, ju*t in the same manner as is done with sheet iron for roofing. " Here you see," said Mr M'William, "the air can circulate freely between every two of the boxes, and it ia not easy to stow the boxes in such a way as to impede this circulation. Here is another plan," he continued, leading me to a third part of the store. "These boxes, you perceive, ,-vra made to project alightly at the corners, so that they too are prevented from fitting together with absolute tightness, and by this method also the air is allowed to circulate with the uecess.ary freedom. It might be as well that the butter producers in New Zealand should be aware of what i^eing done by some of their rivals ia this respect."

''There was alao a malfcer about which I spoke to you in our former interview," Mr M'William went on to say, " upon which I think it would be wise again to lay soma stress.Now look at these two samples of butter," scooping them out as he spoke with that gougeshaped iustrument something like a Brobdingnagian gimlet by which buttermen and cheesemongers so deftly rake out their cylindrical samples. I did look, and I perceived that the New Zealand sample was of a very decided golden yellow hue, or if it was not golden it Was amber ; at any rate it was a very bright yellow. On the other hand, the Danish sample was comparatively speaking so much paler as to be positively pallid. It was hardly even a light straw colour, and in f*ct was almost exactly the tiut of ordinary cream. "Will, now, you see," said Mr M'William, " the gre<tt difference between those two classes of butter. One may perhaps be as good as the other — perhaps some people would like the more highly - coloured New Zealand butter better — but it is not worth nearly so much in the general market. The Glasgow people, and, indeed, the people of Scotland generally, although a few years ago they used to like the butter to be both of a high colour and a good strong flavour, now prefer it as pale and as mildly flavoured as it can possibly be got. And it must be distinctly understood that however excellent in other respects the butter may be, if its colour is too decided a yellow it will fetch some shillings less per hundredweight than the lighter-tinted kinds.

"Then again," he »dded, "apparently a somewhat high flavour goes with high colour. At any rnte, most of the New Zealand butter which is highly coloured is found also to be highly flavoured. Now this is particularly disliked by Glasgow consumers. They won't buy the butter if it° is a high colour, no matter what the flavour might be ; they object to it if it is a high flavour, no matter what the colour might be. But when it turns cut to be both high coloured and high flavoured, then, in the Glasgow appreciation, it is relegated to second or third plaoe. " from mj own t&ve*tisftfciQnft iato.tfctt. w&h

ject, I have uoine to the co-acluvion that the ' h'gh colour and somewhat powerful flavour so | common with even the best New Zealand butter ] is due to the fact that it is too rich in essential oil*, and that these are too strongly developed, and that this, is owing to the extraordinary richness of the New Zealand pastures. For that same over-richness again, the genial climate of New Zealand is partly accountable, and so there are certain conditions against trhioh jit ' will not be very easy for producers to cpnteud.I believe, however, that this will right itself in time, and that, year by year, these pastures will settle down to something somewhat resembling those ef Great Britain, and that then the butter will possess less of these peculiarities, which at piesent' militate somewhat against its value. Ifc is curious to notice the change which haa revolutionised the public taste of late years. I daresay you are aware that not co i very long a£o butter, to sell well, had to be j tinted with aunatto or some other colouring ' matter, but in the present d*y to colour butter j with aanatto would simply be to render it almost worthless." Perhaps I may here interpolate a remark of my otrn 5o the effect that everywhere in Scotland, and also in France, aa well as in the best London hotels, I have always latterly found the butter of the same creamy colour and bouquet. The o!d-faehioned buttery taste seems to be avoided as much as possible, and the utmost care appears to be taken to retain in the butter both the appearance and the pure flavour of the cream. Naturally, the use of the separator and the pronipi churning of the cream both tend In. *;his direction, whereas formerly the ] cr«am was not considered ready for *he churn i nntil ib had stood long enough to beoorne, quifo sour. But we have "changed all that." "It would be a3 well," remarked Mr M 'William, "for New ZeaUnd producers to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the latest methods adopted by the Danes. They Are carrying out with 1 remarkable- thoroughness ■ and elaboration the study of bacterial develop- j raenfc. Most of the educated people know nosy- j adays that we owe the excellence of butter and cheese to the action of certain bacteria that are : developed in the cream or milk. The Danish butter-makers nowadays carry on to a. large extent the development of thesa favourable b&ctecia, »ud by theao means secure for their j>ro- j .duct exactly the flavour that is desired, so fchat j in these times tho manufacture of butler has become a purely, scientific process of almost mathematical precision, and there is very little prospect of butter taking the highest place in the market unless it is made upon these scientific principles. I need hardly say that the British dairy farmer is very far behind all his foreign and colonial competitors in this respect. But at present, as a rule, Denmark beats New Zealand in butter because a larga proportion of it hss turned out in the way I have mentioned. On the other hand, the New Zealand buttec is steadily and rapidly improving, and caosfc of that received this year has been of highly satisfactory quality." Siubstquently, in conversation with an eminent Scottish expert, I led our chat in the san,\e direction that my talk with Mr M'William had pursued. I found that hia views were the same as Mr M 'William'?, only rather "more so." For instance, I asked him what, in his opinion, would be the difference in the market value between a sample of Danish butter (which he showed me) and one of New Zealand, the former being of the pallid tint and the latter of the bright yeliow colour, while there was the marked difference in flavour and bouquet to which 1 have already alluded. Mr M'William had told me that the difference in price would' be fully from 2s to 4s per cwt. This other expert strongly confirmed that opinion, but ! added: "It is ab least that, but he would j not have been wrong if he pub ifc as high as 6s. At auy rate, you may say, without any fear of exaggeration, that the difference in market value between the best high coloured, high flavoured butter and the pale creamy class is from 4s to 6a. At any rate, that is what I find in my transactions, which are, I believe, as large as those of any produce merchant in this city." Now it is of coots 3 quite possible that these doctrines may hava already been preached in New Zealand by your Government experts, and your dairy farmers may be putting the principles into practice. Bb I think ib advisable to give you this latest information from so important an entrepot as Glasgow — which, moreover, promises to be at least a good second to London as a customer tor New Zealand produce.