CRATES FOR CHEESE

Southland Times, Issue 20148, 7 April 1927, Page 11

CRATES FOR CHEESE

DIFFICULTY OF SAWMILLERS. COMPETITION FROM ABROAD. CONFERENCE IN WELLINGTON. At this time of the year butter and cheese factors usually make contracts for their next season’s requirements in butter boxes and cheese crates. The agents for foreign manufacturers of these articles are particularly busy just now seeking to book orders at exceedingly cheap prices. So cheap arc the prices at which these cheese crates and butter boxes from Sweden and the Pacific Coast are offered that it is said to be quite impossible for the New Zealand sawmiller and boxmaker to compete with them, states the Wellington correspondent of rhe New Zealand Herald. On the suggestion of Mr 11. G. Dickie, M.P. for Patea, the Hon. A. D. McLeod, as Minister of Industries and Commerce, arranged a meeting of all persons interested in the production and transport of cheese crates. The meeting was held in Wellington on Wednesday, March 30. There were present the Hon. A. D. McLeod, who acted as chairman, Mr H. G. Dickie, M.P., representative of the Departments of Industries and Commerce, the Department of Agriculture, the Railway Board, the Sawmillers’ Federation, the Taranaki dairy companies and box factories, and sawmillers and boxmakers from the Waikato and Main Trunk districts and Southland.

Most of the discussion was devoted to the question of cheese crates, as it was considered that Baltic spruce and Pacific Coast hemlock had already been proved quite unsuitable for butter containers, owing to the woody taint imparted to the butter when the latter had been in store for any time in foreign boxes. It was also felt that the deterioration in New Zealand butter, which had been reported to have taken place in London, would be sufficient to deter their use in future. The aim of the meeting, it is stated, was not to seek a means to enhance the cost of the cheapest foreign article, but rather to find the directions in which the cost of the local crate might be reduced. It was stated that white pine for cheese crates was already being sold by the sawmillers at a price materially below the cost of production. It was also stated that the boxmakers had reduced their charges to the barest margin. The representatives of the dairying interests admitted a preference for the New Zealand-made crate, and were willing to pay slightly more for the local article, but not an amount that would bridge the entire gap between the respective prices. The sawmillers gave an undertaking that they would consider the question of some further slight reduction in the prices for white pine for these purposes, even though such reduction would be augmenting the loss already being made on this class of timber.