WEST COAST REFRIGERATING COMPANY.

Patea Mail, Volume XXXIX, 26 June 1914, Page 2

WEST COAST REFRIGERATING COMPANY.

Another Record Year. The past season has been another record one for the West Coast Refrigerating Company. Last year the cheese and butter passing through its hands was valued at £734,775 which easily constituted a record. This year it has increased this enormous total! by no less than £22 488, the various amounts being made up as follows: 1913. £ Cheese .. .. 664 272 Butter . ~ 70,503 Total .. 734,775 1914., Cheese .. .. 735,412 Butter .. .. 21,846 Total .. ~ 757,258 It will thus bo seen that the value of the cheese increased by some £71,140 which is accounted for by the fact that several factories that previously made butter went in for cheese making during tbe season just past. The figures go to show the importance of Patea from the dairyman’s standpoint as a port of export, and with every prospect of the large output being increased in the future until the country is fully developed the necessity of improving the port sc as to allow of the free export of produce at all times during the summer mouths is at once apparent. The figures themselves to the average layman do not convey a correct idea of the vast amount of cheese passing through tbe grading company’s hands. It is only when some concrete illustration is afforded cl their exact quantity that their immensity can bo appreciated. As an illustration it may be mentioned that if the season’s output wore placed in the ordinary X wagons in which the cheese is conveyed to the works from the factory and each wagon contained as many as 50 cases of cheese it would represent a single train reaching from Patea to somewhere in the neighbourhood of Moumohaki. This lengthy lino of trucks each containing 50 oases of cheese should surely convince the most sceptical that the time has arrived when every effort should be put forward to improve the port with as little delay ns possible.