CONGESTION AT FREEZING WORKS

Southland Times, Issue 23540, 21 June 1938, Page 4

CONGESTION AT FREEZING WORKS

To The Editor Sir, —While all this agitation is being made to establish a new freezing works in Southland, it is well to look back and consider what the present companies in this province have done for Southland in the past. It must be admitted that the freezing industry has played a big part in the prosperity of the province, and as flocks have increased big additions have been made to the capacity of the three existing works to meet the demand for extra space. We can rest assured that they will be further extended if this is justified. For instance, no sooner was a chilled-beef outfit asked for than it was erected. Growers have been encouraged to ship on their own accounts, a liberal advance of 80 per cent, being paid free of interest on consignment. The companies have introduced and established a Southdown flock which has proved a boon to fat lamb growers. As a result we now have the satisfaction of holding pride of place with the best lamb offered in Smithfield market in competition with the rest of the world. No, we cannot condemn the Southland companies’ efforts to meet the growing demands of the trade, which have placed the farmer in the comparatively independent position he is in today. I will admit the freezing works in Southland have done well for themselves, but this is due to good management rather than the exploitation of the grower. Freezing charges are the same all over New Zealand. Works have gone bankrupt operating on this scale. How would they exist now with the increased costs of labour, and so on? Is it reasonable to ask for a reduction in charges in face of this?—Yours, etc., LOYALTY. June 20, 1938.

To The Editor Sir,— Regarding this agitation for new freezing works in Southland, I reminded your readers in my previous letter of the record lambing last season. Then the drought came, and the farmers have been complaining ever since, wondering how they were going to carry the sheep through the winter with the shortage of feed and so on. This shortage is sure to have some effect on the ewes at lambing time; and even if the weather is wonderful, as it was last year, the percentages are bound to be affected. May I again state that I am not a shareholder in any freezing company and never have been. Everywhere one hears farmers complaining about the high costs. Do they think these would be reduced by having works operating at half capacity? There is not such a great profit in the by-products as some of these would-be financiers imagine. For instance casings, which were once a profitable by-product, are now being manufactured in the United States out of wood-pulp and wool. That is just one example. Surely the Southland electric scheme has been a sufficient lesson for the farmers. They would have been better off today if they had listened to some of the warnings when that scheme was inaugurated. The rates alone which they paid for years without getting any benefit would have been sufficient to pay for new works. Also with the high cost of building today, it is certainly not the time to be thinking of adding more to the burden of their present high taxation. —Yours, etc., SOUTHLANDER. June 20, 1938.