TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays MONDAY, 13th APRIL, 1942 DEHYDRATED BUTTER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4559, 13 April 1942, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays MONDAY, 13th APRIL, 1942 DEHYDRATED BUTTER

AN announcement pregnant with great possibilities for the future' wellbeing of the Te Awamutu and, indeed, all dairying districts was made by the Minister of Marketing at Wellington on Saturday last. Therein Mr Barclay, in mentioning that the Dominion’s export butter position had improved since February last, remarked that success had been attained in the development of pure butter-fat manufacture, so much so that the British Ministry of Food had offered to enter into a contract with the New Zealand Government for the production this season and next of up to 20,000 tons. The news is as welcome as it is highly important in its great prospective bearing upon the future of the industry. It seems that pure butterfat is butter with the moisture and other components removed, leaving only the fat. An average analysis of high-grade butter shows 82 per cent fat, 16 per cent moisture, 1J per cent salt, and I per cent ash. Experiments in this process have been under way for some years, and Massey Agricultural College and the Department of Industrial Research have been collaborating with the Dairy Research Institute at Reading, England. From this dehydrating, which is done by special machinery, comes a product which is whiter and denser than butter, and when put in sealed tins it can be carried as ordinary cargo. That is its particular value at the present time, when refrigerated space, limited in capacity, is taxed to its utmost. Up to the present no information is available concerning the further treatment the fat receives to return it to the form of butter, but evidently the method employed has been as successful as the primary process in New Zealand, hence the proffer of the large contract from the British authorities. Dairy farmers, in these difficult days when lack of shipping threatens their industry, will be gladdened by the Ministerial announcement.