MEAT TRADE

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6544, 15 November 1924, Page 8

MEAT TRADE

PORT OF MANCHESTER A movement is on foot (says the Manchester Guardian) to establish and develop direct shipments of meat from Australia to this country, and in furtherance of this aim a party representative of producing and shipping interests visited Manchester, their chief object being' to see what storage and, transport facilities were offered by the Port of Manchester. The way has already been prepared for a trade of this kind. Reference was made to it by Mr Marshall Stevens at the annual meeting last October of the Trafford Park Estates, Ltd., when he ventilated his suggestion that the Government should provide free cold storage facilities in this country for chilled meat coming from the Dominions. The reason for this is that while shipments from South America come regularly, arriving every week, and therefore cold storage is unnecessary, cargoes from New Zealand and Australia arrive irregularly. This necessitates cold storage somewhere, and at the moment the cold stores in the Dominions themselves are used. Whilst this is good in its way, it does not regularise the arrivals of the meat in this country. From the point of view of the buyer and the consumer supplies are spasmodic in character, and a steady, regular disposal of the shipments is the harder to cultivate. The argument runs that if the supplies were sent over here on every possible opportunity until such times as regular sailings could be organised, then from the cold stores in this country the supplies could be kept up evenly and regularly and a steady and developing demand could be fostered.

There is no lack of cold storage accommodation in Manchester. The Trafford Park Cold Storage Company has the third largest cold store in the country, with a capacity of about two million cubic feet, the Corporation cold stores in Water Street have a capacity of 400,000 cubic feet, and at Smithfield Market there are cold stores with 140,000 cubic feet capacity. Moreover, the Trafford Park Company have a further million feet available which only require insulation. As an inducement to Dominion traders the Trafford Park Cold Storage Company have recently revised their charges, so that not only do they approximate to the charges obtaining in the Dominions, but offer additional advantages. It is possible now, for example, 1 to obtain a weekly rate, a concession of no little importance to the trader, who at many other cold storages has to pay a monthly rate as a minimum whether he keeps his commodities in store three days or the full month. This weekly rate means a considerable economy. FEEDING THE MILLIONS

Storage facilities would lose something of their value if transport and distribution arrangements 1 did not march with them, or even keep a little in advance. Those arrangements exist; they have to exist if only because the geographical situation of Manchester demands it. Within easy distance of Manchester, as reckoned on the basis of what motor transport can do to-day, is to be found half the population of England and Wales. That radius of no more than 100 miles takes in not only the thickly populated area of Lancashire itself and the equally densely populated region known as the West Riding of Yorkshire, but also the industrial portions of Derbyshire and the Midlands. Only London and its environs and the busy corner of South Wales lie beyond this radius. It is an area embracing nearly 19 million people, a population which is three times that of Australia, fifteen times that of New Zealand, and more than the combined populations of Canada and the Union of South Africa. In further emphasis of figures that represent a first-class market for the Dominion traders, let it be said that they are almost equal to one-fifth of the population of the United States, and equal to the total of the white population of the British Empire outside the British Isles. For that great multitude Manchester is the best and the cheapest port of entry for these overseas commodities, and the natural centre for their distribution.