FROZEN PRODUCE LETTER

Otago Witness, Issue 3400, 14 May 1919, Page 15

FROZEN PRODUCE LETTER

CHEAPER FOOD. THE FROZEN MEAT POSITION.

(Fbom Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, March 18. Amid all the confusion and flux of political and commercial changes proceeding just &ow there is to v be noted the one salient fact with regard to food—namely, the prices gire now steadily on the downward trend. This is an important fact, as the mere anSouncement by the Food Controller that he ad reduced the price of meat 2d per lb and hoped to continue that action,, constituted only one swallow, which did not make a summer, and the more general decline ■which is now to be noted is more to be relied upon as an earnest of future conditions. FOOD STOCKS AND PRICES. The freight question is still a very serious one for this country, and only this week there has come an urgent message from Mr Massey that the lack of insulated tonnage has seriously affeofced New Zealand meatfreezing and other interests. It is late in the day, indeed, for New Zealand stocks to bo five million carcases and also quarter of a million butter boxes ■ and half a million cheese orates. Food stocks in the United Kingdom were recently given as hereunder: In tho United Im. Not yet Kingdom, transit, shipped Tons. Tons. Tons. (Meat (refrigerated) 61,300 11,500 19,500 Baoon 45,100 22,200 1,000 Butter 10,500 7,500 16,800 Cheese 7,000 5,700 38,900

'Retail prioes of food on the 3rd inst. had fn an average in Great Britain fallen to 20 per cent, above that of July, 1914, as compared with 130 per cent, on February 1. This 10 per cent, decline is thought to be a very satisfactory symptom, as at the time the Armistice was signed the rise on the pre-war level had gone as high as 133 per cent, on average. NELSON BROS. The striking step taken by the directors of Messrs Nelson Bros. (Ltd.), as announced by Mr Harold Nelson, the new chairman of the company, at the annual meeting in London of that well-known undertaking on the 11th inst., is a move which may bo said to do -a more or less logical one, in view of the impossible position thrust upon British colonial undertakings by multiple taxation. As Mr Nelson said, by this arrangement the company would be relieved to a great extent from the vicissitudes of a trade that would not become less difficult as time went on, and the increase in the investment income of the company would, the directors believed, assure to the shareholders a steady rate of dividend. Mr Harold Nelson, who is so well liked throughout the frozen meat trade, had a splendid reception at the meeting on his assimiption of the position so long held by his late and much respected father, Sir Montague. EASTMANS (LTD.). It is a promising sign for frozen meat distribution in cthis country with firms like Eastmans (Ltd.), which have for so long carried the type of the trade in themselves that they have during the most recent period been able to show good recovery in their financial results. Eastmans, which owns hundreds of frozen meat retailing shops throughout the country, and was before the war one of the biggest, if not the largest, of c.i.f. buyers, made in 1918 a gross profit of_ not less than £138,600 the largest figure since 1909, when the total was £166,900. The net profit for last year stands at £95,300, as against £146,600 in 1909, the golden year. The present result allows the company to return to a 10 per cent, dividend, as compared with 5 per cent. in 1917, and nil in 1916. The net profit :n 1917. was £50,400. Mr Andrew Dunlop, chairman and managing. director, is to bo congratulated upon this good result. AUSTRALIAN FRUIT POOL. New Zealand fruit-growers will have been interested in the stop taken this year for the formation in the United Kingdom of Australian fruit pool, organised to conduct tho txado in a period of uncertainty. In yiow of the high cost and the financial

risks involved in the shipping of apples to England, the Tusmanian Government has formed a pool of the fruit, which it was proposed to ship from that State, and a syndicate—composed of 22 of tho largest receivers of fruit in. this country, in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Hull—has been formed to purchase the entire pool. The estimated total shipments from Tasmania amount to 375,000 cases, of which the syndicate's purchases cover 3C0,C00. It is to the Tasmanian fruit alone that the pooling and syndicate-purchase applies.

THE LATE MR GILBERT ANDERSON. Tho frozen meat trade in London deeply deplores the loss of Mr Gilbert Anderson, who was such a prominent and wellrespected figure in frozen meat circles. Mr Anderson, who has beeii suddenly taken in his sixty-fifth year by the influenza epidemic, was a frozen meat and produce personality, first of all in all his amenities represented New Zealand, and it was as a representative of the Dominion that he was so widely consulted in London by those interested with what one might call trade politics. A prominent member of the Incorporated Society of Meat limporters, his counsel was always for the better organisation of overseas relations, and it will eventually be found that his influence in stemming the tide of American Meat Trust aggression was of the greatest. New Zealanders need no mention here of Mr Anderson's career in the frozen meat trade, which was principally enacted in the Dominion, but a Londoner's assurance may be given that New Zealand has lost a good friend in the Old Country.